Starter Smells Off

Hey all, getting ready to brew tomorrow, so I concocted a yeast starter tonight. I've been at this about 6 months now, and when I cut open my Wyeast 1278 American Ale II, I was not greeted with the same smell I remember, although I've only brewed with this yeast once before.

The smell of the yeast in the smack pack was not overtly offensive, it just seems..off. Smelling some vinegar side by side for comparison, they are nowhere near one another in pungency, but it just doesn't seem right.

The yeast is from Feb 2011, and obviously has been sealed since I bought it. It's stayed in the fridge except for a day or two when I was moving and it sat in the moving truck. I pitched it into my starter, and I just can't decide whether or not this yeast is bad. Granted it takes off overnight, will any signs of bad yeast make themselves apparent before I pitch it into my wort? The starter with yeast pitched smells relatively fine however.

What would you do in said situation

I actually experienced the same situation. I couldn't nail down what the smell was, but it did smell a bit off. I cold crashed the starter, determined that there was sufficient yeast there, decanted the wort, and pitched the yeast. It's been fermenting for a week now, chugging along just fine. Hopefully the beer turns out

Tasting/smelling starters doesn't really tell you anything, unless you boiled the starter wort with some hop pellets, the unhobbed starter beer will start to sour within a few hours to a couple days. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the yeast, it's just that unhopped beer will turn sour pretty quickly.

That's one of the main reasons we add hops to beer, to preserve it, to keep the beer from souring.

If you have no reason to believe the yeast is infected (i.e. improper sanitization practices for instance) then there's no reason to believe it would be infected.

You're pitching yeast and it's fermenting quickly, there's really no time for an infection to take hold.

Guys, I can't stress this enough, fermentation is usually ugly and smelly even when everything is fine a little bit of something on the surface, a funky smell, doesn't mean there's anything wrong. It is really hard to ruin your beer. Infections are NOT the norm, so expecting them to lurk under every corner is just not worth the hassle.

Try to assume everything is fine, not that you are one second a way from death and doom, because 99.99% of the time, EVERYTHING IS FINE!

Hey revvy, how does it get sour if nothing is in it? (nothing bad I mean)

Thanks Revvy, seeing that avatar let me know I was in good hands before I even read your post. Sanitization is paramount of course, I was just concerned by the smell of the yeast smackpack before I pitched it, it just didn't match the profile of 1278 I had in my mind.

rycov said:

Hey revvy, how does it get sour if nothing is in it? (nothing bad I mean)

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there's always bad yeast around. unhopped, unfermenting wort is a perfect base for evil yeasts. they're in the air that gets into the fermenters regardless how hard we try. hoppy wort provides an unfriendly environment for stray yeast cells, but is great for the concentration we add when we pitch. that's why we want the good yeast to take over immediately. and yes, pipes, yoda our revvy is

But it was fermenting. But I guess I see what youre saying, that the bad yeast are in it but not an infection? That would still be a reason to worry though right?