Use this rinsed yeast or trash it?

Trying to figure out if this yeast is ok to use for a weekend brewday or not.

I rinsed it from my 7th batch, which was a CYBI Rogue Dead Guy clone and I used WLP090 SD Super Yeast. That beer was in primary for 18 days and then I bottled it after reading 1.019 five days apart. The OG was 1.068.

The concerning thing is that while checking gravity 4 days after brewday (after krausen had fallen) I dropped the little glass wine thief into the carboy. Gravity was at 1.021 on the 4th day. I do practice very thorough sanitation and soaked and sprayed the thief with star san before taking samples, but I'm wondering if I introduced wild yeast into this beer. There was nothing weird going on visually that would indicate an infection so I decided to bottle it.

The DG clone has been in bottles now for five weeks and they have been gushing and pouring with tons of foam. Considering overpriming – in my notes I wrote, "carbed ~ 2.5v" and I used corn sugar. None of my other beers have had this gushing issue. Luckily I have not yet had a bottle bomb. Regarding flavor, this doesn't taste like Dead Guy so much and there seem to be some off flavors, though I don't really know how to pinpoint or describe what they are. Perhaps a little yeasty. I don't know what esters taste like. I fermented between 65–68 wort temp.

I've seen the time lapse video of gushing beers and know that higher gravity beers take longer, and maybe it just needs more time, but this beer is really not the issue. The issue is whether or not I should use this yeast for a new batch, or should I just not risk it and buy new yeast?

Attached is a photo of a 1L stirred starter from the yeast where you can see some stratification in colors. In the mason jars there was a clearly darker bottom, which I assumed was trub. In the starter you can clearly see three different colored layers, ranging from darker to lighter at the top.

To rule out bottling too early, I just poured a beer into a glass to sit and decarb so I can check the gravity to confirm it's at 1.019. If it's lower then I could assume I bottle too early, and perhaps this yeast is OK to use?

Thanks!

If your getting gushers you may have had a sanitation issue while bottling. You may be fine then again you may not and it was related to the initial fermentation. Personally I would not chance it and just buy some fresh yeast. It's not worth taking a risk and potentially wasting a perfectly good batch of wort to yeast that may or may not be contaminated.

Does the starter taste bad/sour? What off flavors are you getting?

Thanks for the feedback so far. I agree it's not worth wasting a batch of wort over, but just trying to troubleshoot here.

@tre9er I'll check out the starter when I get home. I just put it in the fridge this morning, so I'll decant some of the beer off and do a taste test. The thing is, I'm not exactly sure how to describe off flavors. Obviously, something like sour, or banana is relatively easy to describe, but I don't really know what to say about the DG clone. I'll put another in the fridge and taste it tomorrow to see if I can come up with some adjectives.

When I was making the starter there was a bit of yeast left in the mason jar after pouring it in, so I tasted it and I immediately thought of Sierra Nevada. Something about it just resembled the flavors in Sierra.

The yeast looks good in the pic. Might not mean much, but still...Yeast is pretty resilient, too. I'm pretty sure my 10 generation US-05 had developed a mild infection by the time I discarded it, but you wouldn't know it by my beers.

I feel like the yeast looks good too (what would bad yeast look like?), but I'm curious about those stratifications. Could that indicate multiple yeast strains, or would it be more like same strain differing flocculations?

I tasted the beer off the starter this morning, and the first sip had really similar flavors to the Dead Guy clone, but with each sip that seemed to become less noticeable, and it tasted mostly clean and kind of neutral. I feel like the DG has a strong yeasty taste to it. Perhaps I underpitched and there was a lot of yeast strain? But I think I did a stepped starter if I recall, will have to double check my notes.

Maybe there was a hint of sourness on the end of the first sip, but nothing overwhelmingly sour, and I really had to search to detect any sourness. If I wasn't looking for it I probably wouldn't have noticed. The flavors seemed to mellow out as I continued to sip.

ALSO – I degassed one of the DG beers to check the gravity, which was ~1.0175. Before I bottled it had flatlined at 1.019, but it was only in primary for 2.5 weeks. So it seems as though perhaps it wasn't finished, and maybe that's the cause of the gushing?

Still not sure if I'm going to brew this weekend and pitch the rinsed yeast that's ready to go, or wait till next weekend and buy some fresh yeast.

forgot to mention the foam stopper from the starter smelled exactly like apples.

the first sip had some yeastyness to the flavor that was kind of strong. i hear the wlp090 is supposed to be very clean, neutral, and almost flavorless.

maybe i'll just get a new vial of the same stuff and do some new starters for this next batch. then at least i can be more confident i'm pitching good yeast and compare it to the flavor of the other starters.

i do not like the idea of buying a new vial, and wasting potentially fine rinsed yeast, however :/

Hmmm, well I won't tell you NOT to err on the side of caution. I guess I'm kinda the risk-taker type...so I'd probably use the yeast. Chances are the yeast itself will overpower anything else in there. But I don't want to be the reason you used potentially spoiled yeast.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I am hoping that the reason I'm having gushers is that perhaps I bottled to early, and then that could mean I don't have anything too wild in there.

First, I think I'll take one of the brews into the LHBS and see what those guys think about it after a taste test.

laserghost said:

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I am hoping that the reason I'm having gushers is that perhaps I bottled to early, and then that could mean I don't have anything too wild in there.

First, I think I'll take one of the brews into the LHBS and see what those guys think about it after a taste test.

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Just make sure you take whatever they say with a grain of salt. For some reason some LHBS guys know very little about beer and seem more superstitious than anything.

I used it. Will report back with results.

What kind of beer are you making? Hopefully not something that requires a long primary or secondary. Even slightly infected yeast can produce good beers if you can get them under Co2 and/or chilled fairly quickly.

I brewed Janet's Brown Ale. Came in about 1.064, and it's been fermenting since Saturday evening.

Also, the Dead Guy clone (where I harvested this yeast from) is starting to taste better and less yeasty – maybe it was just green. It's still overcarbed though, but if I'm careful, I can pour most of it into a glass, pausing halfway through the pour.

Finally, I'm about to pull the trigger on some kegs and a setup and go get a mini fridge, so I'll be kegging soon.

laserghost said:

Finally, I'm about to pull the trigger on some kegs and a setup and go get a mini fridge, so I'll be kegging soon.

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I saw your other post. Good deal. Sounds like the yeast will be fine.