Stressed yeast--- should I pitch this?

[badmajon]

I ordered some liquid yeast (WLP005) in the mail, and when I opened it up, it started fizzing. It's been HOT here in the south, even though it was only in a box for a day. I guess it got too hot, and got active.

Anyway, I made a starter out of it, and it hasn't shown a lot of activity. Some bubbles here and there, but I won't really know if it worked until I check gravity tomorrow. Assuming it did work, should I use this yeast? I'm afraid that maybe the stress might of made them disgruntled, and they might make bad beer.

 

[Clementine]

Heating the yeast does not make them active, they are dormant waiting for sugar, the fizzing is normal as sometimes CO2 builds up in the vial (always open with care, count the forums that say my white labs vial exploded all over the place when I opened it, there are lots). So the real concern is the status of your yeast. Did you get it shipped(cold pack or no cold pack?) or did you pick it up? what makes you think it got hot.

Sometimes you can miss the signs of the yeast being active, I have had starters krausen and then drop back and had to look really closely to see if they have shown signs. Take a real close look at the flask, there might be a slight brown ring where the krausen reached its peak. The real sign of fermentation is has the amount of yeast at the bottom of the flask increased? Gravity does not tell you a whole lot about how the yeast are for example, if you pitched 5 Billion Yeast cells of 5% of a vial of viable yeast into a starter it would still eat through all the wort in the starter the difference would be that the latter part of the starter would be in making alcohol in the starter instead of reproducing. Yeast cells will reproduce until they run out of O2, nutrients or sugar (they normally run out of O2 first), they then switch to turning any remaining sugar into alcohol. So just because your starter gravity is low does not confirm how much yeast you have. Best to look at the amount of yeast that has flocculated at the bottom.

If in doubt, crash cool for 24/48hrs decant the used wort off the yeast cake and pour more boiled and cooled wort on top (this is a stepped starter). Don't forget to aerate with O2 or lots of shaking if you don't have a stir plate.

Clem

 

[Calder]

Odds are it's OK. Check the starter gravity, if it lowered, go with it.

 

[tangofoxtrot308]

Had the same post on here weeks ago. My first white labs blew up in my face and the second one took 48hrs to start to activate in my starter. I think the hot weather shipping really screws with the yeast. After 48hrs the starter took off and was finished by the end of the day brewed the next morning! I started noticing fizzing but never saw any krausen. I also swirled the starter every 30 mins when I was around. My gravity dropped from.030 to .007

 

[beer-monger]

Ditto. My first White labs vial I ever used exploded on me as well. I used no starter, just pitched it right into the bucket. Good thing too because it really exploded. Had I been preparing to poor it into a 1000 ml flask half would have ended up on the counter, as it was most of it landed in my fermenting bucket. was my first experience with White labs yeast and was totally unprepared for that type of thing. I will open future vials much more carefully.
End result was that it fermented out my SNPA clone .054 to .009. Then harvested and washed and after 10 days in the fridge made a 1.5 Liter starter that I thought was fermenting very slowly but I tried it in a blonde ale and it still finished it from .046 Blonde ale to .012.
I don't know how to tell if a yeast has been stressed or made unhappy, but I sure wouldn't worry about a little fizziness.

 

[badmajon]

I cold crashed and I saw a nice layer of fresh yeast settled down, so I pitched it after siphoning off the excess. I'm now 3 hours post pitch, and already seeing bubbles in the airlock. I think this one is going to be okay.

We always stress over this kind of thing, but really, it seems at the end of the day, we can just RDWHAHB.

 

[jonmohno]

This happened to me ,my first liquid wlp005 experience. i let it warm,probalby not long enough, but really had to shake it to get the bottem loosend up,so my question is when doing this should i shake it then let it sit for another hour? Does this help when opening it, because i did a small double batch and it exploded over my first fermenter.I was opening it slowly it just sprayed on my hand and the vial and i added what i could to the other which i think i underrpitched and have suspected maybe even infection, as it finished way lower than my other batch which had more of it though. Also seen some scaley stuff after dry hopping that one,but i use idophor and i dont think that stuff lasts more than a week. The stuff is so fizzy it was hard to tell how much to split it when you only have a half a minute to distribute it. Any thoughts?

 

[kh54s10]

This happened to me ,my first liquid wlp005 experience. i let it warm,probalby not long enough, but really had to shake it to get the bottem loosend up,so my question is when doing this should i shake it then let it sit for another hour? Does this help when opening it, because i did a small double batch and it exploded over my first fermenter.I was opening it slowly it just sprayed on my hand and the vial and i added what i could to the other which i think i underrpitched and have suspected maybe even infection, as it finished way lower than my other batch which had more of it though. Also seen some scaley stuff after dry hopping that one,but i use idophor and i dont think that stuff lasts more than a week. The stuff is so fizzy it was hard to tell how much to split it when you only have a half a minute to distribute it. Any thoughts?

Always open White Labs vials very slowly. Like opening a bottle of shaken rootbeer.

Always make starters when using liquid yeast. The packs/vials do not contain the proper amount of yeast cells for an average 5 gallon batch. This way you can easily split and pour even amounts into 2 containers.

 

[jonmohno]

Easier for me since i do 2 gallon batches.