WLP 810 San Francisco Lager Yeast

I bought a vial of San Francisco Lager Yeast (WLP 810) maybe. . . six months ago. Since then it's been sitting in my refrigerator, inside of an insulated cooler.

I'm brewing a California Common on Sunday. I had planned to pitch the vial of WLP 810 into a 1L starter on Saturday night. Looking at Mr. Malty's calculator, though, he suggests that I'll only have 10% viability at this point. According to him, I'll need at LEAST a 2L starter, and he still implies that there could be a lot of off-flavors. Thoughts?

I didn't answer your poll because none of the answers fit my response -

Definitely make the starter. If you have time, step the starter up. If not, use the starter you make. I have no experience using this particular yeast strain, though.

OK, so I made the starter this morning, but I'm not sure how well it's going to turn out. . .

Here's the yeast. You can see that there's actually quite a bit of sediment in the vial, so I'm hopeful that that means it's not all dead.

Check the date on the vial: it's from June of this year, so it's been hanging out in my fridge for six months. At least I had the foresight to keep it in an insulated container, so there haven't been any dramatic changes in temperature.


I used dark DME. It's got a little less fermentable sugars than light DME, but I don't want to overwhelm the yeast, so I'm hopeful that won't be an issue. I opted for dark because (1) that's what I had on hand, and (2) my recipe is already on the light side, and could use a some DME for Anchor Steam's smoky flavor profile.*


Here's the jug after the pitch. I made two liters of wort (about a cup of DME per liter - I know, I know, I should have done it by weight. But it's DME. . . the weights don't vary that much.) I'm going to step the starter up first thing tomorrow, and brew around 5.00pm.


Thanks for the enouragement so far, keep letting me know if you have any suggestions!

*When I say "flavor profile" instead of taste, it sounds like I know what I'm talking about. Don't be fooled.