risk of off-flavors when re-pitching yeast?

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zodiak3000

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i made a starter with what was basically dead yeast. the beer never took off. so after 72 hours i made another starter and pitched. the beer looks like its fermenting fine now. just wondering, besides infection is there any risk of off flavors from having my beer just sit for 72 hours without fermentation?
 
Good question and I hate to say that I'm not really sure. My guess is that the answer would be no as long as it was in a sealed environment. I'd only think an infection would cause an off flavor at this stage. Maybe if the live yeast runs out of sugar and starts consuming all of the dead yeast in there? I'm kind of curious as to what people say.
 
The idea behind pitching a starter culture of yeast is so that the cells start to grow and ferment fairly quickly, outcompeting other organisms and thus preventing the flavors of other yeasts and bacteria from adding to the beer. As was said above, assuming it was sealed and you were clean when transfering and everything was sanitary- there should not be a problem. Most likley your microbial load will be higher than if you had pitched right away but nothing noticable as far as off flavors.

If you decide to try and repitch on the yeast cake, you may run into some other problems but many brewers have had this issue in the past with no problems flavorwise. The dead yeast will drop to the bottom and will not be consumed by the viable yeast cells...If the yeast you originally pitched contained any autolysed cells (bursted) then there is a small chance of a vegetal or meaty flavor but considering that it is such a small amount it should be negligable. If you pitched a large amount of slurry it would be a slightly different story because of the higher cell counts and solids...
 
The idea behind pitching a starter culture of yeast is so that the cells start to grow and ferment fairly quickly, outcompeting other organisms and thus preventing the flavors of other yeasts and bacteria from adding to the beer. As was said above, assuming it was sealed and you were clean when transfering and everything was sanitary- there should not be a problem. Most likley your microbial load will be higher than if you had pitched right away but nothing noticable as far as off flavors.

If you decide to try and repitch on the yeast cake, you may run into some other problems but many brewers have had this issue in the past with no problems flavorwise. The dead yeast will drop to the bottom and will not be consumed by the viable yeast cells...If the yeast you originally pitched contained any autolysed cells (bursted) then there is a small chance of a vegetal or meaty flavor but considering that it is such a small amount it should be negligable. If you pitched a large amount of slurry it would be a slightly different story because of the higher cell counts and solids...

thanks. will not be using this yeast as a cake for re-pitch. i talked to the owner of my lhbs and he said the starter i initially pitched with dead yeast will act as nutrient/food for the new healthy starter i pitched. sounds good to me. there were no noticeable signs of infection and everything was kept sanitary and temp controlled. hoping this batch comes out good cause im pouring the whole keg for a competition in reno next month.
 
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