Good thread, even if it's been the walking dead for 2+ years
Here's some follow-on material....
I suspect results in this area may differ from strain to strain, so I was encouraged to read a previous post on this thread about Wyeast Belgian Schelde 3655. I'm brewing the BCS Belgian Pale Ale this weekend, which calls for this yeast. When I went to the LHBS, they had exactly one very outdated smack pack of this. They have a fridge dedicated to yeast, so I felt it had probably been well-handled, so I went for it.
So here follows a few posts to chronicle the success or failure of resurrecting this yeast.
@SmallBatchBrew Wyeast calls this the flocculation on this "moderate", so I don't know if this qualifies for your interest.
My recipe is a 1.052 OG, so I don't need a monster starter. I'm brewing 5g so normally, I would just make a 1.8L starter and call it good. I'm going to add one step on this just to ease it back into the world.
The package is dated September 29th, 2014, so it's now about six months old. I warmed it while I was at work today, and smacked the pack at 6:00pm. My plan is to let the pack swell, pitch into an 800ml 1.020 starter, and put it on a spin plate for 24 hours. If that goes well, I'll step that up to 2L.
Here's a shot of the pack about an hour after smacking. No real swelling, but that's normal for smack packs in my experience. I'll post another shot in about two hours when I would normally expect to see significant swelling.