One of the best ways to ensure that you have a healthy yeast starter is to use a Stir Plate. Basically a stir plate is a spinning magnet (mounted on a motor) that in turns spins a magnetic "stir bar" in a flask with your wort and yeast mixture that you prepared from the previous blog entry.
Stir Plates can be found online or at local homebrew shops for $40 on up. I love tinkering around in the garage.....so of course I built my own!
First you need an enclosure or box of some sort. I had an old cigar box laying around that worked out perfectly. Radio shack also sells project boxes for around $5 that would work as well.
Next you need some kind of motor and magnet to spin your stir bar. Also needed is power supply. Definitely not needed.....but a nice addition is some kind of speed control to control the speed of the magnet spinning in your wort. Most of us have an old computer laying around that has most of the necessary parts. I used a fan out of an computer along with a magnet that I robbed off of the hard drive from the same computer. Just an FYI.......Only take these parts out of a computer that you definitely have no desire to ever use again! My power supply came from an old power supply for an old modem that I had. I played around with some old cell phone chargers and none seemed to have the power needed to spin the magnet like I wanted. Most power supplies lists what the output is. The one I picked was 12V and 1 amp. I used a hot glue gun and glued my hard drive magnet to the center of the fan.
Here's the front of my box with the switch and the speed control. I need to pick up a different knob for my speed control.
Here she is spinning a vase of water. Pulling a nice vortex!
Remember.....oxygen is needed for good yeast cell reproduction......I usually use a piece of foil or saran wrap to cover the top of my flask. Need to keep the bad out.....but let the oxygen in. Here's a good example:
Please feel free to ask any questions you may have!
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