Starter took forever to start, still good?

Looking for some opinions on this situation. I got a vial of White Laps WLP001 for a 1.067 OG IPA. I made a starter at 1.037 and put it on my stir plate. About 10 hours later there was no activity and the gravity was still the same. Looked at it again at about 12 hours and still no visible activity. At this point I figured I would be pitching my backup US-05 but I left the starter on the plate.

I was outside working for 7 hours and came back and saw that there is now activity at 19 hours, my of my starters would be done by now. This is the first time I have used White Labs yeast, but I don't think that should really matter.

At this point I am really worried about the cell count in there. Would you still use the starter? Should I pitch the dry also? At 1.067 1 package of US-05 is about a 15% underpitch. What says the homebrew crew?

 

Considering we can grow a starter from the dregs at the bottom of a rogue bottle into a half gallon sized starter through incremental feedings...Whether the lag time was longer than you are used to or not, is irrevelant. If you have activity you have yeast reproducing...then amount you use at pitching time is up to when you chose to pitch...if you are concerned about it, and have a couple more days, then step it up some more.

My only concern would be sourness of the beer..if it didn't take off right away you could get something else growing first, and souring it..Which if you decanted it off, ti would be fine as well....

When do you want to use it? if you got time, step it up a couple more times.

I have pitched a couple months outdated yeast tubes into 2.5 gallon test batches without a starter and had the beer turn out fine...

I guess I'm saying, that if you have starter activity, you have reproduction, and you more than likely have a greater cellcount when you started it....and if we can brew beer from dregs in a bottle, your starter will be fine.

 

+1 I agree. You should be fine. I'd give it a bit more time before I got real concerned. I mean "concerned" and not "worried" cause as was said, you should be A o.k.!! Good Luck!!!

 

Oh and going back to the sourness issue, you could also add a pellet or two of hops to your boilng wort...but I've grown starters over a week from a bottle with no sourness, and I've done the same thing over the same amount of time and had them sour (usually if I'm doing it in the summer when I've had the windows in my loft open, and more prone to airborne contaminants....but the yeast itself was fine....

 

You are so right when it comes to the fact that I will have enough yeast given enough time, completely forgot to mention one of the most important facts. I plan on pitching this tomorrow...well today actually now that it is 12:30 am my time.

I will have had about 36 hours of growth before pitching which is normally plenty, but with this slow start it has me concerned about under pitching.

You also brought up a good point Revvy, with the yeast taking so long to start, bacteria or wild yeast definitely had a head start. I was pretty sanitary, as I tend to be, but the weather is nice and windows are open so my house is far from sterile.

So given that I am going to be brewing on Sunday and pitching around 8 PM or so I would guess...do you think the US-05 should go in instead, in addition, or not at all?

 

Just thought of one more bit of info...this is a 2 quart starter. So if the yeast population is low, it could take awhile to chug through.

 

I wne to bed so missed this, and you MAY have already started brewing?!?

I would go with the starter as is (if it doesn't smell horrible) and keep the 05 as a back up and take a grav reading tuesday night...you should be fine, butyou then have the o5 as a backup....

I think you are gonna be fine with it....I don't think you will be too underpitched is you are at all....If you haven't started yet, you've just go another 8 hours since we posted, thats more hours of activity...

I think you'll be set though.

 

By the time I had gotten up there was a small krausen on the starter and it had lightened up quite a bit, both good signs. By pitching time, which was about 42 hours, there was a nice big krausen and it was very light. Looked like the yeast finally got busy and reproduced and was very active.

Decided it was worth pitching the WLP001 and actually started to have some activity in the fermenter within a few hours. Probably not the optimal amount of cells but they got pitched at the peak of activity so hopefully they get their numbers up and ferment away!