No stir plate, Mr. Bond?

My current method is probably the most common in homebrewing. If I’m brewing on a Saturday, I make a starter on Wednesday, crash it by Friday and pitch the slurry after brewing. We recently brewed a lager at Mike’s. On Wednesday I prepared 4 liters of starter wort, waited for it to cool, and pitched my saved Imperial Yeast Global L-13 into the flask and put it on the stir plate. I crashed it Friday, decanted all but about 1/2 liter and split the remainder into two mason jars. One went back in the fridge, the other was pitched into the wort. I’ve been happy with the results of this procedure, but it uses quite a bit of DME (which isn’t cheap), requires planning before brew day (so no spur of the moment brew days for me), and is time consuming (it takes a long time for 4 liters of boiled wort to cool).

I came across the shaken not stirred starter (SNS) method. To brew on Saturday, I’d need to make a 1 liter starter Friday night, cool it, put it in a 1 gallon jug. Shake it until it’s almost all foam, pitch the yeast. And pitch the entire starter 12-18 hours later. Less planning, less DME, quicker cool down. Seems like a win on every level. I haven’t found any links on it, but if I want to bank the yeast, I would make a 2 liter starter and split it between two gallon jugs. One would go into the wort, the other would wait for it to ferment out and put it back in the fridge.

Here are some reasons given for SNS.

• • Turning starter wort to foam dramatically increases oxygen absorption.
  • Pitching at high krausen is much better than pitching yeast that went dormant.
  • Stir plate creates shear stress which is bad for the yeast.
  • Pitching healthy yeast in the right state is much more important than cell count.

Has anyone used this method? Have they been happy with it? A quicker turnaround with 1/2 the amount of DME is reason enough for me to give it a shot next time I brew.

Here are links to information about the SNS method:

Denny Conn old dog new tricks 2015

Shaken not Stirred myth buster 9/2020

SNS how to

SNS illustrated steps

SNS main AHA forum post 2015-19

SNS starter AHA forum 2015

Big list of SNS links