Does this starter look right?

I'm rarely one to come here and ask, "does this look right?" (or similar question) but out of my 5+ years of brewing, I haven't seen anything like this.

Made a starter with Wyeast 1968, production date of 10/8/2013. 1.5L of water and 150g of DME. Yeast looked "normal" pouring it into the flask. 24hrs later I saw this. Basically big chunks of stuff spinning around on my stir plate. When you turn off the stir plate, it immediatley sank to the bottom. I'm sure it's yeast, but it just doesn't look right.

What do you all think?

looks exactly like any starter should look.

BlackGoat said:

looks exactly like any starter should look.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say ANY starter, but some do look like this. Personally, I've only had one starter that looked this way, and it was fine. I have seen others' starters look like this, but it's not the norm, at least in my experience. There's definitely nothing to worry about.

Its normal for it to be all "clumpy" I don't know how else to describe it. It literally looked like cottage cheese spinning around in there...

the notable thing here is the Wyeast 1968. it's a HIGHLY flocculent yeast - that stuff drops like a rock. but yeah, your starter looks normal for a british ale yeast.

not all starters will look like this. most are much "dustier", will take longer to settle out and won't have those long whispy trails/chunks that you see in the first pic. this high rate of flocculation is the reason why british beers are slightly sweet/under-attenuated: the yeast drops out before all the sugars are fermented.

Ah ok, thank you for the explanation, that makes sense.