Ideas to identify mystery yeast?

[aukebaybrewing]

Man getting old sucks. I've got about 8 of my main yeast slurry's (2 generations of 4 yeasts usually) rotating on my keezer shelf in mason jars at any given time. I've been doing this for many years with great success. Last night I was moving the older jars to the top so I use them next and I find an unmarked jar. Ugh... CRS must have kicked in and I forgot to mark it when I harvested. I did the math the unknown is the 9th jar with all my normal ones present. I added 3724 (dupont) this year but I'd be able to identify that I think (even washed)

This is a washed slurry (sometimes I don't wash which would have given me a clue at least with the smell of the beer). There's no helpful identifying smell to the yeast. I know it's an ale yeast (no lagers in the last year). I think my options are to make a starter and try to smell a clue (possibly belgian? vermont ale is a recently used strain and is identifiable by smell or is it totally neutral like 1056 etc) or just make a smash and see what I get. Or just toss it. Thought I'd ask fellow brewers for any other ideas... I hate tossing stuff especially 4 inches of slurry in a pint jar. lol...

Scott~

 

[m00ps]

id make a starter with it, and another one that you know what it is to compare. Its pretty easy to tell the difference between at least general groups of yeasts from the starter wort once you get a feel for what unhopped low OG beer tastes like

 

[aukebaybrewing]

id make a starter with it, and another one that you know what it is to compare. Its pretty easy to tell the difference between at least general groups of yeasts from the starter wort once you get a feel for what unhopped low OG beer tastes like

I agree... I'm going to go over my last few purchases too just to see if it jogs my memory. That's the order of the day... make a starter with it and I'll pop through my others and see if I can even try to get one visually to match up. With an odd number of jars I may just need to pick one and try to compare like you say. I'm not doing anything this week anyway so maybe I'll just do a little smash with it too. I know the characteristics of the yeast in my stable pretty well so maybe I can tell by how the ferment goes and beer tastes. I'll make it a fun little test.

Thanks for the reply and idea!

S~