made a starter with Barbarian last night. production date was 20 days ago - hurrah for fresh yeast! lightly shook the can, top opened without issue. i had a slug of yeast at the bottom of the can that i rinsed out with a little previously boiled water. pitched around 11 pm, it was raging by 7 AM.
so far i'm a fan. high cell count, fresh yeast, easy to use container, good selection. but the real test will be performance... will report back in a few weeks.
Just curious... how big was your batch and what was the OG? I think for smaller gravity 5.5G batches I'm going to stop making starters and just use these. I'm worried about overpitching if I make a starter.