This stirring hot plate is perfect for stirring your yeast starters when the ambient temperature is low or you want to grow up a culture at warmer than ambient temperatures. Simply add the stir bar to the flask, add your wort, boil, cool and pitch your yeast. Add the flask to the magnetic stirrer, add the sanitized temperature probe (keep the probe up off the bottom of the flask), set the temperature and keep your starter warmed and aerated for proper yeast growth.
This mixer comes with a removable probe holding arm and the wired temperature probe. It does not come with a stir bar, these are sold separately here: Stir Bars
Please note: these are not lab grade hotplates and they tend to overshoot the temperature setpoint during initial heating (element stays on until setpoint is hit and the stir plate stays hot for a while longer making the temp of the media continue to increase. My suggestion to avoid this issue is to set the temperature 5-10 degrees lower than you want and increase to setpoint after that. Make sure you are stirring while heating as this will also evenly heat the media.
For example: if you want to grow your culture at 30°C, set the heat setpoint to 20°C. It will hit 20°C and shut off the hotplate but the hotplate remains hot for the next little bit and should get the temp up close to what your desired temp is before starting to cool back down. Lets say it gets up to 28°C before it stops climbing. At this point, before the media temp starts to drop, adjust the setpoint to 30°C and it will only heat up temporarily to finish heating your media and then come on and off in short bursts to maintain temperature.
My second recommendation is to get your media up to temperature and stabilized before introducing your culture. This will prevent yeast stress due to wild temperature swings during initial heating.