Left Liquid Yeast out overnight, an I screwed?

Last night at 7:30 i took my vial of WL005 out of the fridge and put it on the counter. My plan was to make a 2L starter and pitch @ 10:30. One thing led to another and I completely forgot about it until 8:30 this morning. I quickly mixed up a starter and pitched @ ~9:30 this morning.

2 questions

1) is the yeast ok? What are any side effects of it sitting at room temp for 14hrs instead of 3hrs?

2) I'm brewing this afternoon, probably ready to pitch by 6PM, will the starter be ready to pitch by then? Should I wait until Sunday morning to pitch?

Thanks for the help!

The yeast is fine. I do a lot of mail order, and when my whitelab vials get to me they are sometimes almost hot to the touch in the summer, and have been sitting in a 100 degree UPS truck for a week. And I've never had a problem. Just make a starter everytime you brew, and yeast viability will never be a problem

Oh and if you prospective OG is under 1.070 id pitch the starter that you have, but if its over that just brew the beer, let it sit in the carboy or whatever till the morning, and pitch tomorrow morning.

wiescins said:

Last night at 7:30 i took my vial of WL005 out of the fridge and put it on the counter. My plan was to make a 2L starter and pitch @ 10:30. One thing led to another and I completely forgot about it until 8:30 this morning. I quickly mixed up a starter and pitched @ ~9:30 this morning.

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I did almost the exact thing a couple of brews ago. I made the starter as per normal the next day, when the brew day came I pitched it on in and I ended up with a nice vigorous ferment.

Sure leaving it out overnight, or warm shipping, any of these things are going to begin to degrade viability of the yeast, but that's what is great about a starter, you're building back up the yeast count (and increasing it over the levels provided by the manufacturer). Heck, with a good starter I've taken Wyeast smack packs a year past their expiration date and brought them back to usable form.

So yeah, you're fine. Brew on!

bottlebomber said:

Oh and if you prospective OG is under 1.070 id pitch the starter that you have, but if its over that just brew the beer, let it sit in the carboy or whatever till the morning, and pitch tomorrow morning.

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shooting for 1.075, so i'm thinking i should wait until tomorrow to pitch.

Don't pitch until your starter is done 18-24 hours. Then you would have doubled your cell count. That's a high gravity beer.

Definitely pitch tomorrow for the win

Way late with this reply, but thanks everyone. Pitched it the next morning, fermentation took off like usual. Left in primary for 5wks, then racked to secondary for 2wks, will be bottling tomorrow. Thanks again!