Salvaging yeast from a starter that never got used?

[Davrosh]

I had planned to brew a tripel this weekend and prepared a big starter on Wednesday night with a smack pack of 3787 (planned to crash overnight Friday and brew/pitch Saturday). The date on the pack was pushing it a bit at 31st December, but I would have thought there would have been enough viable yeast to take off and do the job. Anyways, it completely failed to take off - nothing, I have not used this yeast before and have read that it can be slow to take off so I left it a few days, and decided on Friday that I should abandon the tripel and brew something else on Saturday, which I did.

Anyways, I left the starter on the off chance something might happen. So, I wake up this morning (Sunday) to clear active fermentation, krausen n'all in the starter demijohn.

So, my question is: can I "save" this yeast? Proving its not something wild taking off, could I ferment out, crash and save the slurry for another brew? Also, how long would it last and what would be the best way to go about this?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.



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[jeremy0209]

I would let it ferment out, crash, decant, and pour the entire slurry into a sealed, sanitized glass jar (eg. mason jar). It should be good for about two weeks just like that. If you store it longer than two weeks, you will probably need to make another starter.

Edit: I'm sure you already know this, but store it in the refrigerator.

 

[cjgenever]

Yup, it's good slurry just like any other. +1 on canning it

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[dinnerstick]

Proving its not something wild taking off

indeed... sounds to me like it's probably fine but i'd watch out for anything suspicious. i have had similar lag times from old or mistreated smack packs, and the recovered yeast has been fine. i haven't used this strain in a while but if i remember correctly my starters, grown very warm, were absolutely honking, like rotten bananas, so that might make it difficult to do a meaningful sniff test.

 

[Davrosh]

Cheers for the advice. I crash cooled and got enough yeast to fill a 330ml bottle. It smelled fine as well so hopefully I didn't pick up anything from the long lag.


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