I need you guys to tell me RDWHAHB (yeast slurry issue)

[cweston]

Sorry about the length: I want to be detailed.

I'm brewing (my first AG batch) tomorrow. After work last night, I took out some saved slurry of WLP001 and made a 1 liter starter.

My slurry was in a 12oz beer bottle. There was about 8 oz in there, and it had settled into about 60% dense slurry and 40% water. It looked how healthy yeast slurry always looks.

I got the starter chilled and into the container, and my plan was to open the slurry bottle, sanitize and burn off the bottle mouth w/ cheap vodka, siphon the water off, and then add the slurry.

But when I opened the beer bottle, there was a ton of CO2 in there, and it started to foam out the bottle. ("Gush seems like too dramatic a word for what happened: more like "oozed.")

My first thought was infection: I took a good deep whiff of the slurry and it smelled fine: like what yeast slurry always smells like. I managed to give the bottle mouth a quick vodka swipe w/ a cotton ball and then pitched the whole thing. I lost about an ounce or two but still got plenty of yeast in the starter.

At every point since, the starter has looked, smelled, and behaved like normal. It started churning within an hour. I put an airlock on at bedtime. This morning, it was past high kruesen. I put it in a enclosed pantry deliberately to trap a lot of odor coming out the airlock: it smelled completely normal.

It'll go in the fridge to settle out when I get home tonight.

Thoughts? Was it just built up CO2 because I capped the slurry too soon, instead of putting an airlock on it for a couple days? Or did it have something nasty and it's going to wreck my beer?

I mostly trust my nose, etc, that it seems normal. But I'm wary.

 

[Lou]

i'd say you're safe trusting your nose. you could probably taste the "beer" from your starter also to further convince yourself.

 

[Desert_Sky]

Its not quite the same thing, but pretty much every White Labs I open does the same thing. It turns into froth, and CO2 tries to push everything out of the mouth. So it usually takes me 5 minutes to fully open the vial. Sounds somewhat similar to what you had happen. And yes, everything smelled normal.
RDWHAHB

 

[Walker]

weston...

did you store your slurry bottle in the fridge or at room temp?

 

[cweston]

Fridge.

I did the "yeast wash" thing where you seperate the slurry from the trub from the water 2-3 times (in the fridge, in sanatized mason jars), then poured it into the beer bottle and sealed it. I'm guessing there was stilll enough traces of wort in there that there was some sugar feeding the yeast and hence all the CO2.

Next time I'll wait a couple days to seal it. (Or open it and reseal it after a couple days.)

 

[WortHog]

I have had the same expeience with a wheat yeast that I place in the fridge and used after it sat there for 2 months and my beer turned out great when this yeast was used just recently. I have since gone to using grolsch style bottles so I can relieve a little pressure from the bottle while it sits in the fridge.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I use jelly jars with lids that I suspect are not as air-tight as they used to be due to all the re-uses. This probably allows any extra gases to escape, but poses no significant threat of contamination.

 

[Lou]

usually for the first few days, i pop the cap a little to vent, then recap. after the 2nd or 3rd day of this, i don't get any more gas released from the bottle. that's when i stop doing it and just let it sit.