Pitched starter late, yeast dead

I harvested the yeast from a bottle of Weyerbacher Twelve and built up a 1 liter starter. Unfortunately my brewing was delayed, and there was a huge krausen on the starter for 5 days before I decanted and pitched it. I figured the yeast might not be at their most active, but would still do their thing. I was mistaken, and now a week has gone by with no sign of fermentation. I just checked the SG and confirmed that it has not changed, those yeasties are dead as doorknobs.

I know it is considered very bad and unsafe to keep unfermented wort around. This little batch has been sitting in its sanitized glass bottle with presumably no yeast activity for a week. If I pitch a pack of dry yeast in there tomorrow will it probably all be fine, or do I have a festering pile of infection that just hasn't reared its head yet? When I took the SG reading it smelled fine, and I worked under a cloud of Star San to keep it safe.

Of course I'm going to do it regardless of what you say, since there's no point in tossing a batch... well, ever. But what should I be expecting?

EDIT: Oh, second question: re-aerate the wort since nothing has happened yet, or leave it alone?

You should try pitching more yeast. The worst that can happen is the batch doesn't taste that good and you can pitch after you stepped through this valuable learning experience...

Starters should be used within the first 4-5 days after pitching (depending on the yeast). I've used starters that were sitting in my fridge for over two weeks without any problems before, but I don't recommend it.

Yeast have this funny habit of aging to the point that their daughter cells are so mutated that they lyse (literally their cell walls deteriorate and the yeast dies). This is described as the somatic mutation theory of aging (also apoptosis). George Fix details this accord in Principles of Brewing Science.

I think you harvested strand could have been so decimated that you might not be able to produce a healthy enough population to ferment 5 gallons.

Re-oxygenation is typically unnecessary due to the copious amounts of O2 that you infused before the initial pitch. I would say you do not need to add any more.

Hope this helps!

How many times did you prop up that starter? Making a 1L starter off the dregs of a bottle isn't going to get you a proper pitch rate. You need at least 100ml of yeast slurry to pitch. And if you brewed a barley wine, more. I also wouldn't harvest yeast from a barley wine, those yeast will be close to dead to begin with. Yeast don't like sitting in 13% alcohol.

Agreed, pitch some yeast and hope it turns out. Taste a sample after ferment, you should be able to tell if it's worth bottling or not at that point.

I don't think aerating is necessary, but I would give it a shake just to make sure.

Props on your sanitization though. 1 week with no yeast and no sign of infection, that's pretty good!

I used the barleywine yeast because that's what I happened to be drinking, but in retrospect it makes sense that an aged barleywine yeast would be pretty sickly.

Added a packet of Nottingham to the fermenter and it took off, it's been bubbling for 3 days.

BTW: it's a 1-gallon experimental batch, and OG was only 1.055 or so. For these little test batches I've been trying to use harvested bottle yeast since it's free and I don't need much.

mrmekon said:

BTW: it's a 1-gallon experimental batch, and OG was only 1.055 or so. For these little test batches I've been trying to use harvested bottle yeast since it's free and I don't need much.

Click to expand...

Haha, ok, that would make sense then.