dinnerstick
Well-Known Member
hi everyone, opinions wanted please! i get all my stuff in the post since there aren't any local supply places here. everything is delivered the next day since the country is small. my wyeast packs have always arrived in good health and fermented away in the starters. but the last one i got was weird. it's 1968 london, with a manufacture date this september. it was ballooned out as if smacked when it arrived, fully inflated but not quite about to explode. of course the nutrient pack was already broken. i read around a bit and saw that other people have sometimes had this happen but that the yeast was fine. since i want to brew pretty soon i decided to throw this into the starter and check how much yeast i harvested at the end, which i can just rinse and measure the slurry volume. rather than complain and have another re-sent. when i opened the package after giving it a good shake and poured it into the starter it was cottage cheesy, really clumpy. i have never seen this before, even in a more flocculent yeast. i gave it a good shake and it seemed to go into suspension, so it's stirring away now (i'm at work so i won't check it for a few hours). i resealed the empty pack and took it to work where i pipetted in a ml of sterile water to rinse and then took off a ml into a fresh tube, and it was really chunky cheesy. i shook and vortexed, it's still chunky. i will plate some of this out to see if odd things grow, or if nothing grows. but meanwhile has anyone seen this before?? how can it be lumpy/chunky?? thanks for any opinions or suggestions.