BeerBorg

While my GY054 yeast starter is spinning, a thought occurred to me (that happens every once in a while).

It seems that cold crashing a yeast starter that uses a strain that is meant to stay in suspension to add to the beer's flavor profile is somewhat counter-intuitive. By crashing, we'd dump the yeast that is still in suspension and keep the ones that flocc'd out. It would be like cold crashing a Hef or filtering it....

On the other hand, the beer (whether kegged or bottled) will end up being chilled before serving anyway so it could be a moot point.
I don't have a real question here - just sharing something that crossed my mind and I thought I'd toss it out there for discussion.

There are still benefits of cold crashing the starter to drop out some proteins, etc. and to remove the "undesirable" wort, I suppose. But I think if I had to do this over again I would time my starter to pitch at high krausen.

Then again, like I said, the beer will be crashed before kegging and then chilled in the keg so maybe this while thought/discussion is pointless.

Why would you do this to me?:)
Now I won't sleep until this beer is kegged and I've not even brewed it yet!

I pitch my starters while krausening, wort and all, so it's a moot point for me.

The undesirable wort causes no off flavors or other undesirable effects that I've ever been able to notice. Sure it tastes awful out of the flask, but so does what's in your fermenter at that stage of fermentation. As far as I can tell the yeast clean it up over time just like anything else. If I'm pitching a huge starter I just try to adjust my wort volume to consider the added liquid.

Beer-lord wrote:Why would you do this to me?:)
Now I won't sleep until this beer is kegged and I've not even brewed it yet!

Because if I have to think about this stuff I'm making others do it, too.

I agree mashani. I'm brewing a decent size starter so I was planning to crash and decant but because of the weather here this is sitting a bit below its ideal temp range and may take off slowly. If that is the case I may just end up pitching at high krausen....Especially if I move my brew day to Saturday.

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I don't think all the haze comes from the yeast. The flocculation of the Wyeast 1318 I'm using is high and folks seem to be making cloudy beers with it. So of the cloudiness comes from the wheat and oats and when the dry hops are added. I have made some changes to my recipe and will be changing it in the NEIPA thread.
I plan to over build my starter and pour off some for a future batch, but will cold crash the main starter before pitching as fermentation with that yeast will be starting from scratch.

My two cents. The majority of the haze is from the massive amount of dry hop and the protein from the unmalted grains used. I dump the whole starter in right off the stir plate, knock on wood no complaints about my finished products.