Is stressed yeast worth saving?

[Chefrlp]

I have some Edinburg yeast left from an awesome Scotch Strong Ale.

Problem is...I harvested this yeast in October of 2014.

It was properly washed and I got 4 solid pint jars from it. It has sat at 34-38 degrees since.

This past Sunday, I finally decided to make starters. I made two 1L starters, using 2 pint jars of yeast per starter...logic here is since the yeast sat so long, I should pitch extra into each starter to capture more viable yeast, and I have two 2L flasks...so why not?

The starters took off very slowly. It took until tonight (5 solid days) to meander through the 0.35 gravity starters.

The nice creamy yeast is a very thin layer on top of an abnormally thick layer of sediment in each flask.

I plan to rack the starter liquid and wash each flasks yeast to yield 2 pint jars of healthy, viable yeast.

So my questions follow;

Is this strain worth fighting for?

Will it still provide the same flavor profile of the first brew?

 

[Flyboy84]

Go for it. If it ate up the starter, it should work just fine.

 

[WoodlandBrew]

Four months isn't an unreasonably storage time. You might be near 50% viability. (Haven't finished that research yet). Glycogen will be just about entirely depleted which would result in a long lag time. How long seems to be fairly strain dependent, and I'm not familiar with Edinburgh. Generally if fermentation performance is not what you expect, then you shouldn't use the yeast, but this could be a usual lag time for this strain after long storage. I would let the starter run to completion (to build back the glycogen reserves) and then centrifuge, or crash and decant. Then try it in a small test batch and see if it performs normally.

 

[Sir-Hops-A-Lot]

This yeast sounds more relaxed than stressed! Jk
I would pitch it because you've just built up a strong colony.
Let us know how it goes.