Hey fellas... I think I know what to do here, but I wanted to hear your input.
I smacked my Wyeast 1082 yesterday and set it on a ledge above my stereo receiver where it was a little warmer. At some point within the next couple of hours, it actually fell off the ledge and landed on the receiver, where the temp of the air coming out of the venting is considerably warmer than nice, clean fermentation temps.
The bag swelle pretty quickly, and I moved it back to the ledge as soon as I saw what it looked like. It was lying there in a too warm place for probably 3 hours max.
Anyway, I made my starter last night, and when I cut the smack pack open... whew! it smelled a little ripe. My thinking it that the fermentation that happened in the little smack pack has got some pretty serious off-flavors from the high temp. It certainly smells like a batch I had brewed at too high a temp once... I guess you could say it smells like plastic bandages, but that would be strange b/c it smelled like this right out of the smack pack so no bleach was ever involved.
I went ahead and made my starter and it's been sitting and doing it's thing in a more controlled climate (it's in my fermentation fridge between 61 and 69 degrees F). Yeast appears healthy and reproduced nicely in the starter over the last 20 hours.
So.. here's the question... if the yeast did produce off flavors in the smack-pack, do you think I am still safe to use the starter in my batch tonight, or will these off flavors continue to be produced in the full batch?
My hunch and common sense says that it will be just fine to use and, as long as I throw away the starter's liquid and pitch only the yeast slurry out of the bottle, I'll be just fine and dandy to brew tonight.
-walker
I smacked my Wyeast 1082 yesterday and set it on a ledge above my stereo receiver where it was a little warmer. At some point within the next couple of hours, it actually fell off the ledge and landed on the receiver, where the temp of the air coming out of the venting is considerably warmer than nice, clean fermentation temps.
The bag swelle pretty quickly, and I moved it back to the ledge as soon as I saw what it looked like. It was lying there in a too warm place for probably 3 hours max.
Anyway, I made my starter last night, and when I cut the smack pack open... whew! it smelled a little ripe. My thinking it that the fermentation that happened in the little smack pack has got some pretty serious off-flavors from the high temp. It certainly smells like a batch I had brewed at too high a temp once... I guess you could say it smells like plastic bandages, but that would be strange b/c it smelled like this right out of the smack pack so no bleach was ever involved.
I went ahead and made my starter and it's been sitting and doing it's thing in a more controlled climate (it's in my fermentation fridge between 61 and 69 degrees F). Yeast appears healthy and reproduced nicely in the starter over the last 20 hours.
So.. here's the question... if the yeast did produce off flavors in the smack-pack, do you think I am still safe to use the starter in my batch tonight, or will these off flavors continue to be produced in the full batch?
My hunch and common sense says that it will be just fine to use and, as long as I throw away the starter's liquid and pitch only the yeast slurry out of the bottle, I'll be just fine and dandy to brew tonight.
-walker