Rats.. all my yeast froze!!

[lasseg]

Yup.. my fridge went completely haywire over the holidays and when we returned to the apartment yesterday I found, to my horror and despair, that all of my yeasts had frozen..

And I mean frozen, rock solid -15 C. Since these weren't glycerol stocks I'm worried they might have died.. What'd you do? Pull out the month-old yeast I might have in my bottled brews or would you attempt to resurrect the frozen yeasts?

What I'm mainly concerned with here are if this amount of stress (bottling/freezing) might have caused my yeasts to mutate.

 

[Evan!]

How much are we talking about here?

 

[lasseg]

Haha, not very much at all... one American Ale, one Wit and then BC1214..


So.. yes.. you're all gonna say "Dude, stop being so cheap, just buy new yeast"..

But I live in Sweden and the nearest LHBS is a stiff hour and a half away, plus I need to take a day off coz they're only open on wednesdays.. and, yeast here is like 10 USD a pop..

So would you do it to save $30?

 

[zoebisch01]

Try to resurrect. I honestly doubt if in the case that some pulled through, that you'd have substantial mutations. *shrug*. Even if you did, would you notice them?

 

[david_42]

I would make a starter from each and save part of it for later. Freezing will kill some of the cells, but not all of them & the chances of your starter going wild is relatively small.

 

[TexLaw]

You don't need to worry about mutation as much as you need to worry about ice crystals ripping your yeasties to shreds.

You can try to make a starter and see what you can culture up. Now, that's when you need to start worrying about mutations.


TL

 

[lasseg]

Resurrection it is! Thanx for your input guys!