mlager

Recipes 

Picked up the last smack pack my LHS had of the Wyeast Belgian Wit yeast... I activated it a few hours before I made the starter and it didn't puff up too much. I made a 2L starter and pitched the yeast and put it on my stir plate. 12 hours later, no activity at all. I've got a blow off tube on it and there isn't a single bubble and no visual activity.

It looks like the yeast was packaged back in Feb 2012 based on the date on the package. This is my first experience with Belgian strains, so before I consider this yeast pack dead, I thought I'd check with the pros and see if this is normal behavior for the strain in any way.

Thanks for any advice!

BigB

Recipes 

Wyeast Belgian Strains can be fairly slow starters... but when they do, watch out because they make a mess. Also, sometimes I've had no visible activity in a stirred starter, but it fully fermented just the same... Check the SG.

__________________
I love the sound of an airlock bubbling in the morning. It sounds like.....VICTORY.

Montanaandy

Recipes 

Just made a Wit with this yeast last week - one of my favs. I believe that it was a July or Aug pack. Behaved as usual on the stirplate - fairly aggressive. I don' t think the yeast is dead but a Feb. date is 9 months old and viability will be weak so it will have sit on the SP for a long while and you may need to ramp it up a second time...

Maj-estic

Recipes 

True that on the quite Wyeast becoming ferocious all of a sudden..
I have even had batches that were quiet the first night (starter made the day before, and pitched at 78), then bubble like crazy the second night , the next day, then nothing...
I Still wait a week to transfer to secondary.

mlager

Recipes 

It began bubbling about 3 hours ago and is picking up, I'm just not used to that sort of lag time. Nothing crazy yet but ill probably end up stepping it up just to be safe, Belgian wit yeast got scarce in Phoenix all of a sudden, ha!