Yeast Starter: Bands in Yeast Cake

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tophers76

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Question: I've done probably 30 yeast starters and had some different/odd results with this yeast strain. Does the brownish layer on the bottom and white layer on top indicate that there is something wrong with this yeast?

Details:
Yeast Strain = Wyeast London Ale (1028)
Manuf. Date of Yeast = 11/26/12
Starter Size = 1L (1.038OG)
Used stir plate for approx. 36 hrs

Yeast2-002.jpg
 
Doesn't look abnormal to me. I've seen plenty of my starters look like that. The lower layer just looks like wort break material, mixed with a little yeast.
 
And that yeast you started with is relatively old. Did it come from the store that old? It's not expired since Wyeast is supposedly good for 6 months, but the viability is probably down to around 40%. I like to see my yeast fresher than that. For most of the more popular strains, I can get yeast less than 4 weeks old at my LHBS, often 2-3 weeks. Occasionally I'll see 6 weeks, but that's not common.
 
The whiter the layer the purer and healthy the yeast are. The lower layer is just alive yeast/dead yeast/hops(if washed yeast)/break/protein

I would also give that starter another day to crash. Ive had alot of yeast drop out after an extra day or 2 after the 24-36 hour norm for lower flocc strains.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone!

Hex23 said:
And that yeast you started with is relatively old. Did it come from the store that old? It's not expired since Wyeast is supposedly good for 6 months, but the viability is probably down to around 40%. I like to see my yeast fresher than that. For most of the more popular strains, I can get yeast less than 4 weeks old at my LHBS, often 2-3 weeks. Occasionally I'll see 6 weeks, but that's not common.
Click to expand...

I got the yeast from Northern Brewer back in the middle of December. My plan of brewing a lot during the Christmas break didn't pan out. I'm pitching the 1L starter into a 1.5L tonight.

Johnnyhitch1 said:
The whiter the layer the purer and healthy the yeast are. The lower layer is just alive yeast/dead yeast/hops(if washed yeast)/break/protein

I would also give that starter another day to crash. Ive had alot of yeast drop out after an extra day or 2 after the 24-36 hour norm for lower flocc strains..
Click to expand...

Yeah, good call on letting it sit for a bit longer. I could still see quite a bit in suspension towards the lower half last night.
 
william_shakes_beer said:
That looks a bit like alien DNA yeast. Where did it come from? :ban:
Click to expand...

This is from my year old tube of WLP 802. Not sure why it did this weird stratification, but last night that same exact jug had almost all of that in suspension with a fine clean white layer on the bottom. I'm guessing a lot of that was dormant yeasts that fired back up.
 

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