Rehydrating Dried Yeast Too Soon?

what happens if you rehydrate the yeast too soon?

i got too overzealous and rehydarted before adding hops (about 1 hour+ too soon!)

is there a way to prolong the yeast at this point or am i just screwed?

You've not screwed up anything.

The first thing I do on brew day is rehydrate my yeast. Some do it a week before and make a starter.

great, that's what i was hoping to hear!

the package said add immediately after mixxing and even though I bet I read it 5-6 times somehow i missed that line.

if you dont mind, how do you make a starter for dry yeast?

Boil water and wort.
Cool to room temp
Add yeast
Put in airlock
Wait 2+ days.

cnapierala said:

if you dont mind, how do you make a starter for dry yeast?

Click to expand...

The same as for liquid yeast - brew a micro batch (a few pints) of unhopped beer (just extract boiled with water for an OG of 1.030-1.060). Cool the wort, pitch the yeast, let it ferment.

A lot of people don't bother with starters on dry yeast, but I always keep a couple of packets of some decent yeast (Nottingham, Coopers Ale, Safeale 56, & Champagne) for the times when I just feel like experimenting with recipes. Once I get the itch, I just re-hydrate and pitch to a starter. It usually takes me a day or two to get all my gear together from the basement up to the brewhouse (garage) in between work and keeping the boys from killing each other, so that works out perfectly to have a good batch of pitchable yeast by the time I'm ready to go.

Dried yeast is fairly tough. A 11 gm packet starts with about 100 billion cells and if hydrated and used optimally, just about all of them will be viable. The worst case, pitching to chilled wort and stirring, will kill about 40%. This will add 2-4 hours to the growth phase (AKA lag time) before fermentation starts.