Planning to brew tomorrow, whomped up a starter last night using Wyeast 1028 London Ale yeast. Mfg Date: April 14, 2016. Yeast was bought from a Northern Brewer store about 10 days ago, kept cold (not frozen) the entire time, stored in refrigerator at home.
Smacked the pack 3 1/2 hours before putting in starter. Boiled 100 grams light DME in a flask w/ a liter of water. Pack swelled a bit in the interim but not much. Flask was cooled to room temperature (72), smack pack was also at that temp. No Fermcap, for reasons that will be clear in a moment.
Sanitized everything, poured yeast into flask, covered w/ sanitized foil, put on a stir plate.
This morning, there is no evidence of activity at all. No Krausen, no nothing. Here's a pic showing what it looks like, at 11 hours after pouring into the flask:
Is this normal for 1028? I'm at 15+ hours post smack, and no sign of anything.
I had an abortive attempt to brew something 2 weeks ago when I'd planned on using the same 1028 yeast--same mfg date in fact, but bought from my LHBS. Same issue--smack pack would not bulge, no evidence of krausen on the starter, and the yeast, when it settled, was tan, not white (normal? I don't know). On that I'd used Fermcap-S, so no Krausen made sense, but on this one I purposely did not include the Fermcap-S so that a Krausen would not be prevented by it.
It looked so non-normal to me that I didn't brew with it, switching recipes at the last minute to something I had more confidence in.
So--is this normal? I did let the starter from 2 weeks ago sit for a week, so I could check gravity. It had fully attenuated by then, and once I let it sit for a while (no longer on stir plate) I saw some bubbling coming up from the bottom of the flask.
Can I use this tomorrow (Biermuncher's Black Pearl Porter) or should I switch again?
Smacked the pack 3 1/2 hours before putting in starter. Boiled 100 grams light DME in a flask w/ a liter of water. Pack swelled a bit in the interim but not much. Flask was cooled to room temperature (72), smack pack was also at that temp. No Fermcap, for reasons that will be clear in a moment.
Sanitized everything, poured yeast into flask, covered w/ sanitized foil, put on a stir plate.
This morning, there is no evidence of activity at all. No Krausen, no nothing. Here's a pic showing what it looks like, at 11 hours after pouring into the flask:
Is this normal for 1028? I'm at 15+ hours post smack, and no sign of anything.
I had an abortive attempt to brew something 2 weeks ago when I'd planned on using the same 1028 yeast--same mfg date in fact, but bought from my LHBS. Same issue--smack pack would not bulge, no evidence of krausen on the starter, and the yeast, when it settled, was tan, not white (normal? I don't know). On that I'd used Fermcap-S, so no Krausen made sense, but on this one I purposely did not include the Fermcap-S so that a Krausen would not be prevented by it.
It looked so non-normal to me that I didn't brew with it, switching recipes at the last minute to something I had more confidence in.
So--is this normal? I did let the starter from 2 weeks ago sit for a week, so I could check gravity. It had fully attenuated by then, and once I let it sit for a while (no longer on stir plate) I saw some bubbling coming up from the bottom of the flask.
Can I use this tomorrow (Biermuncher's Black Pearl Porter) or should I switch again?
