So I went to my LHBS yesterday in preparation for a Saturday (tomorrow) brew day. They had everything i needed EXCEPT ale yeast (ridiculous, right?). They did, however, have expired European Ale yeast that was half price. So I bought it.
Yesterday afternoon I prepared a starter. Now, I've done this about 4 times before, always with un-expired yeast, and always woke up the next morning to a nicely fermenting airlock. I could even see the yeast action in the beaker.
Today, nothing. No doubt, it's due to the expired yeast, right? Is there any hope for this starter? Should I shake it up to get the yeast going?
I have a couple of smack packs so I have a backup plan, but it'd be nice to get this starter going. Oh, the yeast was stamped "Use by Sep 23 07". So quite some time ago.
I would expect it to do something by now. I hope "expired" doesn't mean, "oops, we lef it on the shelf for 6 weeks before realizing it wasn't in the fridge!"
I've never used one that old but I've made starters from vials that were a month or two out of date with no problem (just pitched a lager starter from an expired yeast last week in fact). They usually have much greater lag times in my experience so I would shake the heck out of it and give it some more time.
Give it a really good smell before you actually use it though, if it at all smells bad don't use it.
I had an old smack-pack dated to expire May 08 (assuming viability of 1 year) so I recently decided to use it. It took 4-6 days (I forget which) before the pack started to inflate to any serious degree. I then pitched into a starter. The starter itself led to an airborne airlock overnight last night - after pitching at 10.00 pm.
The starter smelled ok, but the "beer" I poured off before pitching the yeast slurry tasted fairly bad (no I didn't drink it - just tasted), but I kinda expected that
Well, I'm brewing tomorrow night - if the starter still isn't visibly doing something by then, should I risk it and throw it in anyway? Or should I go with one of my back-up smackpacks?
Hey, so we're about to start brewing, and my expired yeast is showing signs of life. Out of my standard airlock we're seeing bubbles about every 2 minutes. Can I pitch this tonight safely?
Does it smell ok? Also since it was so old I would pull a tiny amount of the starter liquid and taste it. It won't taste like beer but it shouldn't taste bad either. If it smells or tastes bad I would dump it and use your other yeast.
Yeast starter with expired yeast - question
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