ChemicallyAltered
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- Jan 7, 2013
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Hey,
So I made a starter a few days ago from slants I had prepared a few months ago from Wyeast English Ale. I took a couple inoculating loop-fulls of yeast from the slants and stirred them around in a sterilized flask with about 200mL wort from DME. I put the flask on a stir plate and let it stir overnight. The wort looked cloudy the next day so I transferred to a 1000mL flask to build up a bigger starter. When I was going to brew today, I sniffed the starter and it sure had a funky smell, not very yeasty at all. I don't remember the English Ale smelling that funky, so I opted not to use the starter.
My question is, was the flask likely contaminated? I feel that I am pretty good at sterile culture and have not had a contamination problem ever before. And I don't see any signs of it like floating mats of bacteria and the like. Or is it likely that I could have ended up with some foul smelling yeast due to the founder's effect of the initially small number of cells on the slants and used to innoculate?
Also, any easy tests that can indicate that what you've got in your flask is indeed yeast?
So I made a starter a few days ago from slants I had prepared a few months ago from Wyeast English Ale. I took a couple inoculating loop-fulls of yeast from the slants and stirred them around in a sterilized flask with about 200mL wort from DME. I put the flask on a stir plate and let it stir overnight. The wort looked cloudy the next day so I transferred to a 1000mL flask to build up a bigger starter. When I was going to brew today, I sniffed the starter and it sure had a funky smell, not very yeasty at all. I don't remember the English Ale smelling that funky, so I opted not to use the starter.
My question is, was the flask likely contaminated? I feel that I am pretty good at sterile culture and have not had a contamination problem ever before. And I don't see any signs of it like floating mats of bacteria and the like. Or is it likely that I could have ended up with some foul smelling yeast due to the founder's effect of the initially small number of cells on the slants and used to innoculate?
Also, any easy tests that can indicate that what you've got in your flask is indeed yeast?