Yeast dead??

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jodell

Welltown Brewery
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I am fairly certain it is dead, however I have never had a batch of yeast die on me since I used to live a mile from a homebrew store. I have recently moved so I am forced to order yeast.

Anyways, I ordered wlp004 and wlp815, Irish ale and Belgian lager. It took a full week to get in because of delays and low and behold, it was 100 degrees the day it was delivered and sat on my porch for about 3 hours before I could get home from work. I was not confident at all with this but decided to build a starter anyways just to see. After a day nothing was happening so I turned my stir plate off and sat it on the counter to dump it, when I then decided to pour myself a beer and forgot about it. I came back about an hour later and it had a little foam on top of it... so I then decided to put it back on the stir plate. About an hour later it had about an inch of foam on top. Yes! It's not dead! Well then another hour later the foam was gone and now it just looks like a starter that is done. Has anybody had an experiance similar to this? I am trying to get everything to settle and take a gravity reading of it
 
I forgot to say this yeast starter was only for wlp004. I haven't done anything with wlp815 yet
 
I thought about that, however nothing looks right with this vial. It's gravity is 1.034
 
It's not dead, it's mostly dead...

As @brewkinger said, crash and rebuild. Maybe 2x.

Or order more yeast and hope the temps stay lower and the transit is shorter. Always try to prevent bridging a weekend in transit, so order Sunday or Monday at the latest. Allegedly, USPS is best as everything is air transport, except for local deliveries. UPS and Fedex use trucks, even for coast to coast, unless you order air at $$$.

No local or more nearby source, huh?

Those ice packs they include are a pile of hogwash. I bet they're defrosted by the time the package leaves the warehouse. If anything, they may provide a little buffer. 10# of grain surrounding the yeast would be a much better insulator...
 
I bought it with an ice pack and ordered it Sunday night, however I decided to be cheap and get the lowest shipping when 2 day was only 5 bucks more... I did order more from a different store (Williams brewing) because they have the insulated warranty boxes.

And we do have one homebrew store about 30 minutes away, however they only sell one strain of dry yeast and I didn't want to use it. They are actually a beer garden that have a few homebrew stuff
 
I agree that the yeast is not dead. You have had some action. I would cold crash then decant the liquid and do another round of starter wort. Maybe even 2 more rounds. When working with questionable viability or small amounts I like to start off with a weak wort to lessen the shock on the yeast. I make vials to freeze that contain only 5 ml of yeast. I make 250 ml of 1.025 wort for the first step. 500 ml of 1.035 for the second step then treat that as a fresh package of liquid yeast for a typical starter as the final step.

When ordering liquid yeast use a close supplier, add the ice pack, hope for cool weather and order shipping that will assure that the yeast doesn't sit on a truck in the sun over a weekend.
 
OK so another thing happened a little weird. I've been making starters for awhile but I'm pretty new at calculating how many yeast cells I'm actually pitching (I typically pitch way to many) so I decided I'm going to save this one as kind of an experiment for me since I have no clue the viability of it, so I took it off the stir plate and kind of forgot about it for a day or two. Well I came back and it was very foamy and I'm fairly certain that it totally fermented the original starter I made. Right now I am crashing and decanting and then I'm gonna rebuild, and save it for later
 
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