[roffenburger]

For the past few batches I have been making starters and re-using yeast. In the past I have mainly used US-05. I made a stir plate and have plenty of DME to last a while for starters. I have noticed break material in the starter wort I make on the stove. Should I worry about this in the starter? Is there any benefit to starting with "clean" wort that does not contain the break?

Is it necessary to "wash" the yeast when saving from a previous batch and storing it in the fridge--so its trub free?

Thanks in advance!

[ndcube]

I used to save yeast cake w/ trub and pitched w/o washing it and it worked ok.  You just need to realize that a large percentage of the yeast cake (1 quart to a half gallon in my case) is not yeast.

Now I settle out the trub before fermentation and get nice clean yeasties.

[guvna]

I never worry about starter cold break. It seems almost negligible in relation to the amount of cold break you'll likely get from your actual wort, and I don't consider it worth the extra handling and chance of infection of the yeast prior to pitching it.