Something must have gone wrong

I brewed a 1.060 OG Rye PA at 148 degrees to because I wanted more fermentables and hopefully a 1.010 FG. I made a yeast starter as I normally do with WLP001.

I pitched my starter at 70 degrees after 1 minute of O2 aeration

All the numbers looked fine. I've took a gravity ready before racking to secondary to dry hop it and it was 1.008....OK, a little low, but not too bad....possibly iI had a batch of some good fresh yeast.

When I took my FG reading before kegging it was 1.000....

I do not taste any off flavors at all.

I've followed my same procedures with a Foreign Extra Stout with the same equipment and the numbers look fine for the OG.

I am extremely consistent with my sanitation procedures and have no idea how the Rye PA went so low. I had harvested the WLP001 for a big barleywine I'm planning...but now I'm afraid I may have to dump that harvested yeast so as to not take any contamination risks with the barleywine.

I'm not sure if I should dump the beer or try to blend it with something.

Any suggestions would be appreciated

if it tastes good, just go with it, and try to track down the cause for the next batch. No sense in wasting good beer, even if it's not perfect.

if it doesn't have any off flavors why would you consider dumping it?

I wouldn't assume anything went wrong. 148 and WL001 combining for a very dry beer is not surprising.

But I wouldn't use the harvested yeast again until or unless you are satisfied it's not a random yeast or infection.

I recently had surprisingly high attenuation with WLP001 as well...and with a rye pale ale. Weird. I went from 1.058 to 1.010 after a 152F mash.

Check your hydrometer?

What were your times in primary and secondary? Whenever I have had an infection it occured after normal fermentation and lasted a very long time, 2 months plus. I am not sure if an infection can sneak in and do its work alongside the yeast job and finish up in a 3-4 week period and be done.

All the same though I would not pitch any yeast I felt was suspect on a grain heavy barley wine. Definitely taste the beer before you do anything with it. If its okay bottle it. Even if you do not like it after it ages, give it away, you'll make lots of friends that way.

With high attenuation, and the resulting higher alcohol content, won't the alcohol affect the density of the mixture, being that it's lighter than water?

Just wondering aloud...

It was in primary for 2 weeks and then secondary with dry hopping for 2 more weeks.

I think I may have found the issue while going over my process. I've recently been using a contraption called an auto-shiphon. My 1st one started cracking and then broke after 4 or 5 batches. I replaced it with a new one, and it had started to get cloudy on the inner surface. I guess I thought with a good soaking in Oxy-clean and hot water and then a good long soaking in Star San, that there would not be a problem.

I stopped using it after that last racking and will be using a different siphoning technique.

Also, I think I've figured a way to check the viability of that yeast slurry. I'll rack my new Foreign Stout to secondary ( without that auto-siphon ), make a pac-man starter with some fresh pac-man....then brew a huge RIS and pitch it on the fresh yeast cake with the pac-man. I can probably get enough wort out of the 2nd & 3rd runnings of the RIS and add some DME to make a small batch of American Brown. Then pitch 1/4 a cup of my questionable WLP001 yeast slurry....and then wait and see what happens.

If all is well....then I've still got 1 3/4 cups of good slurry in my refrigerator, another fresh yeast cake, and a good session beer....if not, then I'll get rid of the yeast.