Issue with Wyeast?

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hanuswalrus

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Hi HBT,

I work at a LHBS and I've been running into some issues with Wyeast yeast. Looking to see if anyone else has any similar experiences lately.

We sold a few WY1099 Whitbread Ale yeasts a couple weeks back and had everyone that bought and pitched the yeasts come back within a few days to inform us that the yeast never took off. No krausen ring, no gravity drop... nothing. So we advised them to pitch another pack.

Then, another customer came in with an abomination of a sample from a saison they had "fermenting" with WY3711 French Saison (a beast of a yeast). The sample was an EXPLOSION of sulfur. None of us could diagnose what would cause such an awful outcome, especially from Saison yeast. The only thing I could think of that would cause a sulfur bomb would be dead yeast/autolysis.

Then, I planned a Belgian Dubbel using WY1214. Did a starter 2 days ago and let it spin at 65F for 24 hours. Placed it in the fridge last night to crash so I could decant today prior to pitching. When I pulled it this morning, it smelled like rotten frickin eggs.. Let it warm up to pitching temperature and it still smells like rotten eggs/extemely sulfuric.

Anybody else getting this from these Wyeast strains?? This seems very odd to me. I've used these strains a few times before and never noticed this. Any feedback would be appreciated.
 
Sulfur is pretty common on a few strains, including Belgian. If you haven't had it happen before with 1214, maybe the pack had low cell count for one reason or another. First thing that comes to mind is that the shipment sent to you ended up being spoiled due to heat or another factor in the delivery chain (assuming all of these arrived together). This could explain why multiple customers reported problems.
 
Of all the possible causes, I'd guess this happended downstream of Wyeast. Strict QA in yeast labs compared to no quality assurance in package delivery and storage. Any chance it's the fridge at your store? Do you know if the yeast packs swelled?
 
I agree that the poor storage/conditions is happening somewhere during transit. Our fridge we store the yeast in is in good condition and have never had an issue before with it. And no, the packs in question did not swell when activated.
 
I've had issues getting a starter to revive WYeast several times in the past. I went to dry yeast and never looked back. Never had a problem since switching.
 
You've never experienced sulfur before?!?! Patience my friend. It's all very normal. Sulfur will always dissipate with age, maybe 3-4 weeks at most in most cases, rarely takes much longer than that. No worries!
 
I haven't used Wyeast in a while. I generally don't really like the smell of yeast. Some strains are worse than others. I haven't paid much attention to the smell and the beers have been good. I have never had one that didn't ferment. All liquid yeast I use gets a starter so I would know if it was dead before brew day.
 
I've experienced sulfur before, but not to this extent. I know it dissipates with age. Never had a starter smell so pungently of sulfur like this one did. The beer is smelling quite nice right now 3 days after pitching so I'm not so worried anymore. It was just the culmination of a few reports from customers of some smack packs not swelling, my sulfuric starter and the EXTREMELY sulfuric sample another customer brought in that caused me to pose the question to HBT. Thanks for the feed back, guys.
 
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