Old Harvested Yeast Use

[hbhudy]

I harvested a quart of yeast from a yeast cake of WLP530 about a year ago and had it in my Keezer but never got around to using it.. I wanted to throw together a simple Belgian Pale Ale and wanted to know if folks think it would still be okay to just pitch in or create a starter and see if it is still good..

 

[Gnomebrewer]

You will most definitely need a starter.

 

[jerbrew]

^^^^^^^^ This ^^^^^^^^

 

[hbhudy]

I am going to throw together a simple small starter and see where it goes from there

 

[hbhudy]

It was a no go on the yeast.. The starter did not help.. Looks like this was to long for the yeast to remain viable

 

[kh54s10]

It was a no go on the yeast.. The starter did not help.. Looks like this was to long for the yeast to remain viable

You didn't give it nearly enough time. I would have done about 250ml of 1.025 wort and left it for 2-3 days. Then step that up to 500ml for a day or 2 before deciding it was truly dead.

You probably had only a small amount of viable cells to start from so it would not act as a normal starter would.

 

[DurtyChemist]

Yeah as mentioned above you needed more time and focus on the year old yeast than pitching it into a 1.040 wort and letting it spin for 2 days. You needed some weak wort to wake the cells up first followed by more. I'd have done 250 mL, decanted then 1L, decanted THEN started my brewing starter.

 

[hbhudy]

You are absolutely correct.. I left the starter sitting in my brew room since I posted this and low and behold magic happened.. The yeasty came back to "life" and magic happened!