Stir plate for yeast

So while I'm whiling away the hours in the hospital waiting for my next bag of medicine, I thought I'd show off another of my other brew-related toys. For tonight's adventure, I'm showing off a stir plate.

"Why use a stir plate in homebrewing ?", little Tommy asks.

Disembodied authoritative voice explains:

"Well son, a stir plate helps to improve the cell count in the yeast starter. When pitched into the wort (pre-beer liquid), a strong yeast starter improves the speed at which fermentation in the beer begins, and discourages unwanted bacteria from growing." You can make a yeast starter without using a stir plate, but there's a lot of evidence that the stir plate, with all of its aeration and circulation, results in much hight yeast cell counts (2x-3x larger)."

Empirically, on my first batch using the stir-plate starter, I noticed a much more rapid start to fermentation in the beer. In short, this is nothing more than snobbish beer geekery. :)

There's lots of info online on how to make stir plates, and I borrowed from here and there, but the final product was of my own construction and design.

I built it back in early May from the following materials:

1. A cheap picture frame (from a thrift shop)


2. A computer fan (staples)


3. An old cell-phone charger (from my battery drawer)


4. Some rubber stoppers (homebrew shop)


5. A disused laptop hard drive (thrift store)


6. A radioshack rheostat and


7. Radioshack toggle switch


8. A stir bar (bought online)


9. Machine screws (Lowes)

Here's a video: