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Concern or over concern on contamination of yeast starter

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redwood1957

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Made my first starter yesterday. I made boiled two batches using LME, while I was chilling the pot in the sink (ice bath) I got some ice water on my hand ? but I did see two drops go into the beer. I continued and pitched the two yeasts in two different containers. Both picked up fast and are moving along fine. White labs 001 and white labs 300.
Is there a way to check other then smelling ( In mr beer days I did have contamination that smelled and tasted bad I think I will remember that)
I know different yeasts will have different smells.
 
you are likely fine. Starters taste and smell a bit different then a hopped beer so I wouldn't put too much faith in a smell test unless it smells like complete ass or something like that. RDWHAHB.
 
If you were going to wash these yeast or use a portion of the starter for a yeast bank you might want to consider isolating a pure colony before storage but for a batch of beer(perhaps 1 round of washing) I wouldn't worry.
Tap water is pretty clean to begin with so anything in it will get overrun by the vastly superior numbers of yeast you've thrown in. There probably isn't any more contamination introduced than just whatever dust settles in it while you cool.
 
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