Frozen White Labs Yeast

Well I get my ingredients for next weekends dry stout and my 2 vials of White Labs WLP007 yeast was frozen in transit. One was pretty solid, the second didn't look as bad. Its dead isn't it? I figure I'm going to order a few packages of S-04 and make a starter with my frozen WLP007 Wednesday or so. Maybe at least the less frozen one survived. If I can just get one of them going I can maybe make a BIG starter and pitch half in one bucket and half in another. Or do half with S-04. Anyone have any experience with frozen White Labs yeast?

No experience myself, but this came up on another board a couple of days ago, and Chris White (of Whitelabs) was quoted on saying only about 10% of the yeast would die from freezing. Make a good starter and don't bother with the S-04.

Ølbart;1068455 said:

No experience myself, but this came up on another board a couple of days ago, and Chris White (of Whitelabs) was quoted on saying only about 10% of the yeast would die from freezing. Make a good starter and don't bother with the S-04.

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That is extremely good news.

I had the same problem last week. I made a starter on thursday afternoon, and by friday night it wouldn't start. I dumped it in anyway just to see if it would work. It lagged until tuesday and when I got home from work wednesday morning I had a blow out to clean up. Yeast is pretty durable.

Just as Olbart said.

Directly from the horses month.

Thank you for your inquiry. Some yeast cells will die when the yeast freezes which can reduce the viability by approximately 10%. However, in our experience, this reduction is not significant to cause fermentation problems. While it is not desirable to freeze the yeast on purpose, incidental freezing during shipping or storage is not usually a problem. Making a starter is probably the best recommendation for your brew. Stay warm!

Lisa R. White

Vice-President

White Labs, Inc.

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