Yay or Nay? Could the yeast be harvested from...

...a 4-year old bottle of Westvleteren 12?

I've been cellaring the bottle for 2 years (since it was brought back from a co-worker's trip to Belgium) and will at some point finally crack it open and enjoy it. But before that day, I'm curious to know if 4 years is too long for the yeast to still be alive.

Any thoughts?


I'll probably end up trying anyway...just in case

Oh, and just to rub it in, I got this thought last night while drinking a 5-year old bottle of Rochefort 10. It was soooo goooood!

Give it a shot, there is probably something alive. I'm always leary about whether the bottle conditioning yeast is the same as the brewing yeast.

It's just the Westmalle yeast (WPL530 or WL3787) so I don't know if it's worth the effort if you may not be successful. That said, they've harvested yeast from bottles taken off the ocean floor and from fossils milliions of years old, so it is definitley possible, maybe even likely in your case.