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Pitch the Whole Starter or Decant?

philm63

Grandmaster Brewer
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Getting ready to brew my Belgian Blond this coming weekend and will be making a starter using my new stir plate for the first time. The calculators are telling me I'll need around 1.6L to get the desired cell count when using a stir plate.

Question is; do I pitch the whole starter at high krausen, or let it finish, settle, decant and pitch only the slurry?

I'm not looking for the shortest possible lag time - I'll take healthy yeast growth over short lag times every day - so getting the yeast to start doing its thing quickly is not my concern.

My concern is it's a 5.25 gallon batch, and 1.6L of some "other" liquid may have some effect on the flavor of the finished beer. Granted I will be using the exact same DME for the starter as in the beer (my recipe only has a few ounces of the DME...) so I'm not sure if I am really going to have a flavor issue adding a 1.6L starter.

Suggestions?
 
I always do starters early enough to cool and decant, but the rule of thumb is that strongly flavored beers like stouts "absorb" the spent starter better than delicate beers like a pils or kolsch. 

As everything, it's the brewer's call. 
 
When my starter is at high krausen and I am ready to pitch, I will pout the whole enchilada in. This usually means I fill my carboy too much and have a lot of blowoff.  If it past that, I chill it then decant off the wort.
 
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