Pitch it again, or pitch it out

[whovous]

Three or four months ago, I made a Centennial Blonde 2.5 gallon batch with Conan, then harvested two pint mason jars of beer, trub and yeast.

A month or so ago, I made a starter for one of the jars in a one liter flask with a foam stopper. I wound up not brewing that weekend, and I left the flask with the foam stopper in the fridge until last night. I made a pint of wort from DME and put it on the stir plate overnight in the same flask.

The attached picture was taken after about 14 hours of stirring. It looks like very little activity to me. Can this yeast be saved?

Right now, I want to brew today (another Centennial Blonde, FWIW) and to oxygenate and pitch either today or tomorrow. I think I have four choices:
1) Put what i have now in the fridge for a while, pour off the beer and pitch what settles tonight and hope for the best;
2) Put what i have now in the fridge for a while, pour off the beer and use what settles as the basis for a new starter. I will let today's brew cool naturally and pitch the resulting yeast tomorrow.
3) Use the trub and yeast from the bottom of the pictured Mason jar as the basis for a new starter. This is the other jar from the Centennial Blonde I made months ago. I am concerned that it no longer looks remotely blonde.
4) Find a package of dry yeast somewhere in the fridge. I think I have some US-05. It is probably a bit old, but given that I do 2.5 gallon batches and this is a fairly low ABV brew, I think I should be OK.

If I take the 4th option, I will simply throw out the two Conan attempts. That seems a shame, because I really want to harvest some of this yeast for a Northeast IPA. But if it's dead, it's dead, right?

Advice, please.

 

[whovous]

Anyone?

 

[chickypad]

Starter looks pretty normal to me, I don't usually get much of a krausen with continuous stirring. There's a bit of a glare there but as long as the surface is clear I also think your other jar looks fine. I often see leftover starter "beer" turn dark over time which I just attribute to it being oxidized.

 

[woo_pig]

Take a gravity sample and see it is low .If not trash it.

 

[treacheroustexan]

Starter looks pretty normal to me, I don't usually get much of a krausen with continuous stirring. There's a bit of a glare there but as long as the surface is clear I also think your other jar looks fine. I often see leftover starter "beer" turn dark over time which I just attribute to it being oxidized.

Agreed. I used my first stir plate a few days ago for todays brew and no krausen at all.

 

[flars]

Yeast in the flask looks good. Inoculation rate may have been a little high for the volume of starter wort indicated by the yeast ring in the flask above the krausen. Just my opinion but you should have enough good yeast to pitch into a 5 gallon batch up to an OG of 1.074.

 

[whovous]

Thanks, all. I've had a habit of overpitching, so if that is my only risk here, I will take it. The flask is in the fridge now. When it settles a bit, should I decant it, or should I just pitch the whole thing? The DME is pilsner, and I am making a Centennial Blonde.

 

[Bishop]

One for sure looking at the picture. I always decant just because I don't like the idea of adding "****" beer to my fermenter. Plus, this might help a little bit with overpitching.