Yeast starter dilema

dan125 · Feb 23, 2018

I'm planning to brew tomorrow and ingredients were delivered on Wednesday - I received a very old liquid yeast, but chucked it into a 2L starter anyway, which is only now starting to show very tentative signs of life.
The supplier was good enough to replace the yeast, and a mucher fresher pack arrived today.
The question is should I;

A) Add the new yeast to the now 2 day old starter wort
B) Pitch the new pack direct into the brew tomorrow as well as the dodgy starter
C) Make a brand new starter with the new pack tonight & hope its ready by tomorrow afternoon
D) Something else

:Cheers:

Ajhutch · Feb 23, 2018

Is this beer a big ‘don’t want to waste a lot of hop money on a dead yeast’ brew? Because to me secret option D) brew two beers sounds good!

Ajhutch · Feb 23, 2018

To be more constructive, I know yeasts are different but my recent experience, I had a Vermont vial that was about six weeks out of date (I knew it was expired when I bought it) and the starter took a little while to get going and wasn’t as active as I’d previously seen with that yeast, but the main fermentation went just fine, it was a bigger starter than Mr Malty said I would need for my batch size just in case.

Saisonator · Feb 23, 2018

I would go for B, try and get the dodgy starter up to 24c today and over night, then stick it in the fridge in the morning to crash it.
Between the two you should get enough yeast.

Simonh82 · Feb 23, 2018

dan125 said:
I'm planning to brew tomorrow and ingredients were delivered on Wednesday - I received a very old liquid yeast, but chucked it into a 2L starter anyway, which is only now starting to show very tentative signs of life.
The supplier was good enough to replace the yeast, and a mucher fresher pack arrived today.
The question is should I;

A) Add the new yeast to the now 2 day old starter wort
B) Pitch the new pack direct into the brew tomorrow as well as the dodgy starter
C) Make a brand new starter with the new pack tonight & hope its ready by tomorrow afternoon
D) Something else

:Cheers:

Was the yeast actually past it's use by date, or just not very fresh? And as Ajhutch says, how big is there beer? If the starter is showing good signs of life now and you've got another day to go, I expect it would be fine to just use the original starter. On the small off chance fermentation doesn't start as you would expect, you can always direct pitch the new yeast.

foxbat · Feb 23, 2018

Now that you've got two then just do (B) as Ajhutch says. For the future there's usually nothing wrong with older packs of yeast but it's best to step them up rather than just go straight for the big one. I got a 5 month old lager yeast pack that took about 36 hours on the stir plate to show signs of activity in a 1 litre starter. The second stage was off in rude health in less than 12 hours as was the main brew after pitching.

dan125 · Feb 23, 2018

Thanks for the replies - to give a bit more info I'm hoping to brew an english pale/bitter using nearly all Chevallier and restrained hopping - its not a brew I'm likely to do again for a while so don't want to muck it up with a crappy yeast pitch.
I'm using wyeast 1275 thames valley in approx 28L at 1.050
The first pack was over 6 months old, & the starter is barely doing anything but smells like its fermenting
The 2nd pack is 6 wks old with a Brewersfriend estimated viability of 69%, so even the starter & the new pack could be a significant underpitch.

dan125 · Feb 25, 2018

Ended up going with option B - fermentation is kicking off nicely this morning, about 12 hours after pitching.
:Cheers:

Yeast starter dilema

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