One of the easiest and most effective ways to improve the quality of your homebrewed beer is to pitch a healthy population of yeast cells into well-oxygenated wort. And the easiest and most effective way to ensure that you have a healthy population of yeast cells is to pitch a pure, laboratory-grown culture, which at the homebrew level would mean pitching several packs or vials of liquid yeast at the same time. Unfortunately, with yeast going for $ 7–$10 per pack, the easy route can be cost-prohibitive.
That’s why yeast propagation (making a starter) is so popular. It lets you build up a healthy pitch from a smaller culture, using malt-based wort as the growth medium. And there are two big things you can do to promote cell reproduction in starters:
- Give the yeast cells plenty of oxygen.
- Keep the yeast cells suspended in the wort.
Both of these ends can be met through a variety of means. Here are three ways to aerate and agitate your yeast starter, plus a cop out that will still get you results.