Potential yeast starter contamination/fail

Happy Friday HBT! :rockin:

So I'm prepping my starter for tomorrow and I had one of two potential issues which may result in a trip to the home brew shop in the morning. I was religiously keeping everything except for one major over sight, the yeast vile itself. As I opened the vile, one I didnt expect it to foam out the way it did, and two in an effort to keep it from going everywhere I hit the side of the flask with the "dirty" yeast vile. The starter is going on the stir plate for now but if this was YOUR issue, would you go buy a new yeast to pitch tomorrow or just roll with it. Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.

I would observe and roll with it. The yeast foaming would not allow nasties in. Did you hit the vile on the inside of the flask? Even so I would not sweat it. I'm sure it will be fine. Next time try to break the seal on the vile while its cold and periodically as it warms up. Or just use wyeast because they packing is far superior to white labs in my opinion lol. Good luck

Just roll with it.

I think with all the stress on sanitation most brewing sources make now they don't explain what is happening very well on the micro biological scale. Even if you have immaculate procedure you will have some level of "bad"organism contamination in your beer most of the time. Your goal is to build enough health yeast to out compete any other organisms for the available resources (maltose, etc). That way what ever else is in the beer can't grow enough to contribute any off flavors to your brew.

I have a friend who told me how he started brewing in the nineties and would use his mouth to start siphons and his hands in cool wort, and out of hundreds of brews only had two our three spoiled batches, cause he used lots of yeast.

So what I'm saying is, you are most, 99%, likely fine. unless you scooped the yeast foam off the vial with your finger and flicked it in your vial...

And white labs designed their vials to avoid your pour from picking up contaminants