Rehydrating yeast with starsan

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Ramitt

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I really need to mark the jug better. Thought it was distilled water, doh.! I am guessing this will not turn out well. Tommorrow I was planning to dry hop a different ale, gues I wil dry hop it in a secondary and learn to wash yeast. Or could I just dump the new ale on the old cake?
 
I've often heard it said that diluted starsan breaks down to be yeast food, however, I've never heard of folks using it to rehydrate. Hopefully, someone with more knowledge can chime in.
 
Don't know if they will die. What happened after you let them hydrate? Did it foam up like normal? I have used starsan in my mash to lower the ph but I guess thats not quite the same ratio.
 
I did this once. It turned out perfectly fine. My thinking was " don't want contaminated water. Why not use star Stan? It's a sanitizer and becomes yeast food!". Pitched it and was up and running in less than 5-6 hours. A month later I was listening to brew strong and JZ was talking about how pitching directly into the beer kills half the yeast because of the ph of the wort. star sans ph is definitely more acidic than the beer.

I dunno if that's necessarily true but I'm sure it isn't the best thing for the yeast.
I used about a cup of star San when I did that.
TLDR: you'll be fine.
 
I've even nuked 1.5C of tap water for 5 minutes,then stuck it in the freezer till it comes down to a comfortable temp. Then pitched on that. But never used starsan in it. Not sure about that one,since I don't know how fast it breaks down into yeast nutrient.
 
I just want to be clear, it was not intentional. I thought I had used a jug of pure distilled water, but after dehydrating and pitching, I noticed it was a jug of distilled I had added starsan to. I had not marked as such clear enough it would seem.
 
Well it has a Krausen this morning. Not sure if I should be happy, or question Starsan as a sanitizer. To be fair it had been mixed several weeks ago, so many it has lost its strength. I think I am still going to pitch some yeast I am going to wash from another batch.
 
Well it has a Krausen this morning. Not sure if I should be happy, or question Starsan as a sanitizer. To be fair it had been mixed several weeks ago, so many it has lost its strength. I think I am still going to pitch some yeast I am going to wash from another batch.

If you have a krausen why would you want to pitch more yeast? It sounds like it is working why risk adding any potential for infection. I would let it be, if left alone it will also answer your question about what star san would do to yeast.
 
I was hoping someone would chime in. This just 'kinda' rings a bell. I think water that is too pure is wrong because of the osmotic pressure or some such.

That is correct, you should not use distilled water to rehydrate yeast, it does not have any ions and creates too much osmotic pressure across the yeast cell membrane....too much water enters the yeast cell and ruptures it.
 
If you have a krausen why would you want to pitch more yeast? It sounds like it is working why risk adding any potential for infection. I would let it be, if left alone it will also answer your question about what star san would do to yeast.

Probably true, just concerned that the starsan probably killed off a lot of the yeast, so that it is now horribly underpitched. Probably best tp leave it be.

On the plus side the surviving yeast must be very strong, perhaps unkilllable super yeast. The negative is they possibly lead to the zombie apocalypse.
 
Probably true, just concerned that the starsan probably killed off a lot of the yeast, so that it is now horribly underpitched. Probably best tp leave it be.

On the plus side the surviving yeast must be very strong, perhaps unkilllable super yeast. The negative is they possibly lead to the zombie apocalypse.

Lolz! resident evil ale anyone? I think it's worth trying myself.
Aaah,just got a wiff from my airlock. Fermentation temps are finally back up enough to get things moving...:cross:
 
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