BamaRooster
Well-Known Member
OK I am trying to use liquid yeast from white labs and I am starting to freak out because I see no activity. A bit of history first.
I am on my 3rd batch of beer, again this will be an extract brew from a kit, but this time I chose to go with liquid yeast. The kit is a Fat Tire Clone from Midwest and the yeast option was White Labs Belgian ale (WLP550). I posted here for advice on this batch and received tons of great tips to tweak my process. The instructions from Midwest strongly urge using a starter for the yeast stressing that it could have been damaged in shipping and a starter would prove the yeast was still viable. When the stuff came in I stuck it in the fridge, (that was last week) and yesterday thought, "let me check the expiration date" it was then I saw the date 10/22/2011. I thought crap man you gotta get this batch going so I prepared my starter. I did not have any DME but found some info on a LME starter and built it last night. 2 cups water boiled for 5 minutes with 2/3 cup LME. Sanitized everything up and cooled down the starter to 70 degrees and pitched in the liquid yeast. After 12 hours I see nothing. No bubbles no foam nothing but the yeast separated on the bottom. THe only thing I did notice was that when I agitated it this morning there seemed to be allot of foam generated for the small amount of agitation used.
So am I just a noob freaking out or is this yeast bad? I was planning on brewing Friday night so I still have 36 hours, is there a chance it will take longer to get started?
I am on my 3rd batch of beer, again this will be an extract brew from a kit, but this time I chose to go with liquid yeast. The kit is a Fat Tire Clone from Midwest and the yeast option was White Labs Belgian ale (WLP550). I posted here for advice on this batch and received tons of great tips to tweak my process. The instructions from Midwest strongly urge using a starter for the yeast stressing that it could have been damaged in shipping and a starter would prove the yeast was still viable. When the stuff came in I stuck it in the fridge, (that was last week) and yesterday thought, "let me check the expiration date" it was then I saw the date 10/22/2011. I thought crap man you gotta get this batch going so I prepared my starter. I did not have any DME but found some info on a LME starter and built it last night. 2 cups water boiled for 5 minutes with 2/3 cup LME. Sanitized everything up and cooled down the starter to 70 degrees and pitched in the liquid yeast. After 12 hours I see nothing. No bubbles no foam nothing but the yeast separated on the bottom. THe only thing I did notice was that when I agitated it this morning there seemed to be allot of foam generated for the small amount of agitation used.
So am I just a noob freaking out or is this yeast bad? I was planning on brewing Friday night so I still have 36 hours, is there a chance it will take longer to get started?