Starter from secondary

Being pretty new to using starters, I mistakenly decided to make one from the small amount of sediment from the secondary of my last brew, a clone of Victory Hop Devil IPA. I harvested a bit of the sediment after racking the IPA to the keg. I made a starter wort (OG 1.050) of only a pint, tossed in the sediment slurry and crossed my fingers. It got going but not very vigorously with only a half-inch or so foam on the top. The yeast is American Ale 1272.

So then I decided to do some research and after reading here and asking my brew shop guy, I realized my mistake. The Hop Devil IPA is pretty strong, I think about 7%, so I was concerned being in that high alcohol environment had damaged the yeast. That and other comments about how the yeast in the secondary is "second string" made me think it was a waste of time. But by now the shop was closed and I wouldn't be able to get any new yeast for a couples days and my new brew was cooling—it's a bastardization of a Merlin Ale, OG 1.055.

So I decided to step up the starter to a liter. This got going very vigorously and started blowing through the air lock. I figured it was worth a shot.

When the brew had cooled to about 70 I pitched the starter. 12 hours later there was no discernible activity. 24 hours after pitching there was a slow and steady bubbling from the airlock. It's in a bucket so I couldn't get visual evidence of fermentation---I didn't want to pop the lid that early in the fermentation. 36 hours after pitching it was still slow and steady. Got home from work that afternoon about 45 hours after pitching and it had gone ballistic. Froth blowing up through the air lock and collecting on the bucket. In fact, this was a more vigorous than the higher gravity IPA.

Took a gravity reading last night, 7 days after pitching, and it was 1.017. So it's almost done and almost ready to go into the secondary. It tasted fine.

Overall I'm pleased to have pulled this off when all signs pointed to not doing it. I think the main problem is the lag time between pitching and vigorous activity. I'm wondering if another step in the starter would have prevented that.

Next time I'm harvesting from the primary, washing and storing as instructed in the "yeast washing" sticky above.

Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts or concerns that I haven't considered please reply. But I'm not too worried about this batch, I think it will be fine.

The biggest recommendation I've heard against harvesting from the secondary is that you're harvesting less flocculant yeast. I still haven't quite worked out in my head what this means to your brew, to be honest - but it sounds like you're having success wtih it, and that's what counts!

Enjoy!

yeah i think stepping it up another time would have fixed your problem. I've always been told that your best yeast comes from your primary and that you shouldn't harvest from secondary. but like stratslinger said it's because you get less flocculant yeast. that's pretty awesome that you got good results from it tho.

Yeah the danger in harvesting from secondary and/or high gravity high hop beers is more that you are going to end up with a mutant strain. You made yeast. Maybe underpitched a little (you can measure how much slurry you have and use Mr Malty)? Probably fine.

Not questionihng discouragement of havesting secondary, but a question: why would the preference be for selecting the most flocculant yeast? seems counterintuitive... more floculant means it poops out and drops to the bottom earlier, menas it is more likely to stall. What am I missing?

It'll take longer to ferment and can leave cloudy beer. Not a big deal