WLP004 Irish Ale Question

I received my shipment of yeast on Friday from AHS and at first I thought it may have been frozen. I shook the vial and the yeast broke up a bit, but its almost "lumpy" looking. I did a starter Saturday night and had a very small krausen on top and everything had fallen as of yesterday. I swirled the flask a little to agitate it and the entire bottom is stuck together like a pancake. Is this normal for this yeast? This is the first time I'm thinking I got a bad one, but the best before date is May 2010.

well after a VERY quick search on Google i found that that yeast has a medium-high flocculation rate. this means that it wants to clump together. chances are your yeast are just fine.

Starters will usually have little to no krausen. So don't worry about that. And as Tipsy pointed out, some yeast flocculate. Just give it a good shake before you pitch. I just bottled a stout using Wyeast 1084 (which should be the same yeast) and the yeast cake at the bottom of my fermenter was good and solid. Makes for a clean beer (I hope!).

I've used WLP004 for starters and repitching. Its a resilient yeast. In the starter it kept flocc'ing to the bottom, and intermittent shaking was good enough to keep it going. I pitched before high krausen and had a great ferment. It all settled out very nicely in the fermentor as well, making the harvesting/repitching process real easy.

If you really want to break it up in the flask, you could boil sanitize something small like stainless steel nuts and toss it into the flask as an agitator. Also I use yeast nutrients in my starters, which helps bring everything to life.

I've got a batch in primary right now that used WLP001 and that vial definitely froze at some point. It was in the trunk of my car for like 2 weeks during a cold snap around 25 degrees F. The starter went fine and its fermenting like crazy right now.

Guys,

Thanks for the replies. I feel a little better now and just pitched the yeast starter in Ó Flannagáin Standard recipe on this site. Hopefully all goes well and should have a nice stout in a month or so.

Thanks again

The batch is fermenting like crazy. :rockin:

I love the Irish Ale strain. I'm using the Wyeast version, but it's the same animal. I saw the same thing with my starter. It clumped up at the bottom of my flask and took some good agitating to get the clumps to break up and go back to a nice liquid form. It actually clumped so well that my stir bar was stuck to the bottom of the flask after 24 hours of idle time.

As you're seeing, the yeast are fine and ready to kick ass in the fermenter. I have an Irish Red and a Stout rapidly fermenting right now with the Irish Ale yeast.