Slurry lag versus fresh pitch

[Spivey24]

Some anecdotal notes on a slurry lag time experience with simple yeast storage from this weekend.

I brewed a blonde ale, yesterday. Finished brewing ~2pm.

A quart jar filled with 2nd generation Nottingham slurry harvested on 3/5 was taken from the fridge and set in a dark spot on my kitchen counter ~11am. My house was at 70F.

I collect slurry via 5oz long handled stainless ladle from the bottom of my kegmenter post fermentation. I generally pitch and rack to a keg after 2 weeks and then collect slurry.

It was 1047PM before my kegmenter came down to 67F in my fermentation fridge. I had ran 10 gallons through an immersion chiller to knock the temp down a bit, racked into the kegmenter and put it in the fridge to continue cooling. 1047PM is when I pitched by pouring off most of the liquid, swirling the yeast into suspension a bit and pitching straight in.

The temp was set to 64F plus 2/minus 0 with an inkbird probe taped to the kegmenter w/ a couple layers of masking tape.

I woke up at 627AM and blowoff was bubbling @ ~ 2 bubbles per second and the probe temp read 64F.

Maybe notty is better suited for this. But I guess that is the problem - too many variables. The yeast strain, length of storage, previous brew strength, etc. if you are a brewery doing the same brew on the same schedule with the same yeast, you can find a repeatable solution. But homebrewing, forget it for me.

 

[Nubiwan]

Do a search for yeast viability. There is more hype about starters than there is truth. For instance, people say you have to have a large starter for a lager since it will be fermented at a cool temp. Gordon Strong, a 4 time Ninkasi award winner, has said that the often make a batch of lager and pitches a single smack pack. Wouldn't a Ninkasi award winner know what good beer is? Wouldn't he try to make it the best possible for his own consumption? What does he do to make a single pack ferment his lager properly while other people argue that you can only do that by making a starter and then step it up to a bigger starter?

My question would be, what detriment, if any, does lag time of 48 hours, or pitching old slurry have, over a fresh yeast that kicks off within hours? My intuition/experience tells me it might not be measurable at home brew scale.

 

[McMullan]

My question would be, what detriment, if any, does lag time of 48 hours, or pitching old slurry have, over a fresh yeast that kicks off within hours?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/pitching-slurry.696361/post-9296881

 

[RM-MN]

My question would be, what detriment, if any, does lag time of 48 hours, or pitching old slurry have, over a fresh yeast that kicks off within hours? My intuition/experience tells me it might not be measurable at home brew scale.

The longer the lag, the more chance bacteria have to propagate. Presuming that all the bacteria are dead after the boil it will only be bacteria that falls from the air and that will take time to build up a large population. The introduction of a large amount of yeast will counteract that.

 

[odie]

Wait! I've been seeing that one should not go past about 5 batches on a yeast because of mutations. 12 has to be too many, right?

there is no standard. repitch until you get a bad beer or the yeast slurry sells funky. Yeast strains have been propagated for centuries.

MK1 sniff test before repitching. If the slurry smells bad it's probably bad. If it smelled fine but the beer turns out bad anyway, well toss that new slurry (and beer) out too and start with a fresh pack of yeast. At some point your sanitation probably got sloppy.