I need some help to eliminate a possible error in my brewing process

[Elysium]

I have been brewing for 6 months and there is something new I decided to do: rehydrate my safale S-05 yeast. The instructions are relatively clear on the website of the company.

There is one extra step I added: immediately after pouring the yeast into the cooled (previously boiled) water, I stir.
The yeast cells seemed to have clumped together though and I used my fingers to get them off the spoon. I always wear previously sanitized gloves...so I am not worried about that at all.

I am worried about the fact that maybe, for some reason, I killed off most of the yeast cells or lowered their viability. After some 30 minutes, a small amount of foam was rising in the middle of the glass (I guess in the middle..because the stir I gave to the liquid, drew most of the cells in the middle).

Basically...what I'd like to know is whether or not I lowered the viability of my yeast with this step or did stirring help waking the cells up even more?

 

[BradleyBrew]

I believe if you follow the directions you will increase your cell pitch count vs. just sprinkling directly onto your wort. This is subject to debate if this makes a difference. I personally notice a difference when I rehydrate dry yeast. YMMV

Do this, get a glass mason jar with a lid. Boil your water and cool to rehydrating temp (i just use bottled water that I heat in a warm bath fyi), pitch your yeast and let them rehydrate naturally, with the lid on shake the mason jar hard to bust up any clumps, let that settle, swirl the yeast back into suspension, and pitch into your wort.

 

[smccarter]

...get a glass mason jar with a lid. Boil your water and cool to rehydrating temp ... pitch your yeast and let them rehydrate naturally, with the lid on shake the mason jar hard to bust up any clumps, let that settle, swirl the yeast back into suspension, and pitch into your wort.

Great idea. I recently started rehydrating dry yeast as well. I'm in Florida and I've had a few liquid yeast purchases die on me during shipment this summer, so I started using dry yeast again. I'll be using this method... thanks for the info.