Starter smells and tastes slightly of vinegar

[Yourrealdad]

Pretty sure I just ruined my beer. Pitched my starter and then noticed it had a slight sour and vinegary smell and taste to it.

Infected yeah?

Should I dump it or ride it out and see what happens

Yeast was grown from pouring off 500ml of the previous starter that I think smelled fine. Yeast is WLP001.

Followed my usual procedures beside using the yeast from previous starter. Yeast was put into a glass Ball canning jar that had sat in star san.

Star san was about two weeks old maybe, which I thought was still ok?

After reading this I still can't tell. It seems half are thinking it is bad and half think it is normal. No one ever commented on if the beer turned out ok.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/yeast-starter-tastes-like-vinegar-142964/

All the other threads I have read about everyone has the same issue as me, but no one ever comes back and says how the beer turns out.

Also seems like this is happening with WLP001 quite a bit

 

[stpug]

Starter "beer" is never very enticing or exciting. To me, it's always just kind of crappy "stuff" that I'd never drink. HOWEVER, I've never thought of vinegar when tasting/smelling starters or their top-water.

In your case, there's no sense in dumping the batch if you've already pitched. Ride it out, or you can even pitch a sachet of dry yeast and hope that the new yeast scrounges up all of the available oxygen so that any acetobacter that's in there doesn't have it to make more vinegar. You'd then need to ensure a very strict oxygen-free environment until drinking time.

Either way, no sense dumping until you can better determine if something happened.

 

[Rickcobba]

Hey mate.

So did your brew turn out ok?

I have just finished my first started and i have the same concerns. When i first remove the foil lid it has a vinegar smell, then after a few seconds it begins to smell normal/yeasty. What i decanted tasted slightly sour as well.

 

[ram5ey]

I'd venture to say it's totally fine. I always see these threads where people say this and think "why smell or taste a starter?" I know the vials of white labs usually smell pretty sour/cidery So I'm sure it's all due to the process. Starters contain a massive amount of yeast vs a relatively low amount of sugar so any other organism should find it nearly impossible to get going in one.

I bet your beer is fine.