[BrewingRover]

I don't think that my pressure canner would fit one gallon jars.

How much headroom do you need to leave in a jar when pressure canning? I'd imagine you can't can a 1-qt. starter in a 1-qt. jar.

Only an inch of headspace in a quart.

And I was mistaken, they're half gallon jars. Six fit in my canner.

[erockrph]

If you want to go the lazy route for starters then just add your DME right to a sanitized gallon jug, add a quart of water, cap it and shake till it's all foam, then pitch your yeast and cover with foil. No expensive can of concentrated starter needed. I've made dozens of starters like this and never had a batch go bad as a result.

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[brewinhard]

If you want to go the lazy route for starters then just add your DME right to a sanitized gallon jug, add a quart of water, cap it and shake till it's all foam, then pitch your yeast and cover with foil. No expensive can of concentrated starter needed. I've made dozens of starters like this and never had a batch go bad as a result.

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No boil, huh?  What about getting the DME well mixed in?  Do you stay under a certain starter size for this?

[blair.streit]

If you want to go the lazy route for starters then just add your DME right to a sanitized gallon jug, add a quart of water, cap it and shake till it's all foam, then pitch your yeast and cover with foil. No expensive can of concentrated starter needed. I've made dozens of starters like this and never had a batch go bad as a result.

I've always been leery of this due to something I heard previously about tests done on DME versus LME. It was probably on Brew Strong, but Jamil mentioned some tests that someone at White Labs or Wyeast had done. The results were that packaged DME actually had a significantly higher bacterial load than LME. The conjecture was that this was due to differences in the drying/packaging process versus the LME canning process.

Based on what you've said, I'd be interested in digging up that study (if it was ever published) and reviewing the results. In your case it seems like there haven't been any issues. It could be that the bacterial counts are still relatively small in either case so that the difference is irrelevant if you're pitching pretty quickly. That said, I'm always the most cautious about sanitation when propagating because the conditions are also great for bacterial growth and they can reproduce so much faster than yeast.

[erockrph]

If you want to go the lazy route for starters then just add your DME right to a sanitized gallon jug, add a quart of water, cap it and shake till it's all foam, then pitch your yeast and cover with foil. No expensive can of concentrated starter needed. I've made dozens of starters like this and never had a batch go bad as a result.

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No boil, huh?  What about getting the DME well mixed in?  Do you stay under a certain starter size for this?

If I'm not sweating it when it comes to boiling, a little bit of undissolved DME (and there's usually a very small dusting left by the time I'm done shaking) isn't really too bothersome to me. Think of it as trub

I only brew 3 gallon batches, and I'm a firm believer in the "Shaken, not stirred starter" method. Even for lagers, I'm only doing about 1.5 liter starters, tops.

As far as bacterial growth goes, even if there's a few cells on DME, that stuff is massively hygroscopic. If they survive, they're not exactly going to be primed to take off fast. I don't use this method for things like old or unhealthy yeast packs, or waking up bottle dregs. But for a healthy pack of yeast, I'm not worried. I think of it as a no-boil mead, or the many times I've forgotten to add sugar until after I chilled (why is my OG so low... d'oh!). If the yeast are in way better shape and quantity than the possible contaminants (if any), then they're going to take over quickly.