26 month old Wyeast 1728

In the process of getting the brewery set back up after 2 years and defrosting and cleaning the hop and yeast fridge, I pulled out some old slants and plates etc along with half dozen Wyeast packs, ALL 2years old or over. Hmmmm, just for fun, let's see if one of these could be revived.

Using sanitary proceedures 500ml of wort was inoculated with the pack. Four days later, using the stir plate, we now have two liters of Wyeast 1728 past krausen, and ready to be bumped to 4 liters.

I haven't tried the slants or plates or the other packs yet, but i'm going to if this one makes a decent Scottish 80.

I went to make a starter yesterday and found that I should have looked at the date on the tube when I bought it from my LHBS. It looked like burnt egg drop soup but I put it on the stir plate anyway. This morning....activity. Life will find a way for sure.

Catch-22 said:

I went to make a starter yesterday and found that I should have looked at the date on the tube when I bought it from my LHBS. It looked like burnt egg drop soup but I put it on the stir plate anyway. This morning....activity. Life will find a way for sure.

Click to expand...

Sure looks like it.
The little envelope you're supposed to smack was still intact. I cut the corner off, removed some with a pipet and it tasted like scottish ale wort. interesting. Anyway, it is now 6 liters in high krausen. Won't be long and the brewery will need firing up...

Hey guys, last week I tried to revive a 14 month old Wyeast 1968 in a 500 ml, 1.020-something starter. I haven't noticed any krausen but there is yeast that has settled out on the bottom. Not sure if that's what was in the smack pack originally or what propagated. I'll take a hydrometer reading tonight, but would it be out of the ordinary to not see an active, foamy fermentation?

14thstreet said:

Hey guys, last week I tried to revive a 14 month old Wyeast 1968 in a 500 ml, 1.020-something starter. I haven't noticed any krausen but there is yeast that has settled out on the bottom. Not sure if that's what was in the smack pack originally or what propagated. I'll take a hydrometer reading tonight, but would it be out of the ordinary to not see an active, foamy fermentation?

Click to expand...

The only reason I posted on this was that I was totally amazed that there were some live cells in the pack after so long. The colony is now 8 liters and resting in the botom of the vessel. I have tried three other yeasts after 2 years, and they are dead.

With very small build-ups from a slant etc, 10ml, 50ml, 500ml etc little visible activity is expected, a few tiny bubbles perhaps. Afterward, very visible signs are expected.

There is no doubt the yeast resting now is the original strain. IT is one tough yeast!

When you boost to one liter, you will know for sure, no missing the activity in the flask. cheers.......

PS. The little pouches that are supposed to be "smacked" seem to be of the proper wort type for the strain. Interesting. to me anyway. I'm easily amused......

SG was about 1.010 so if I made my measurements correctly, there might be some live yeast. Thanks for the heads up on the step-up activity. On one liter right now, fingers crossed. I've heard good things about that scottish strain. I winged my scottish ale with 1056 and while the ferment was clean, I might have missed on the recipe, including the yeast. Not sure if that's what makes a "scottish ale" scottish, but to heck with style, right?