White labs fail?

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vonski

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Inexperience, first time with WL... Starter yeast, 2L flask ready to go. Foil sanatized... action. Didn't realize there was a sanatized inner tube inside the outer wraper. Cut both, poured into the flask... most definitely yeast on the outer wrapper not sanitized that made its way into the flask. Start over?
 
As long as your starter takes off in a reasonable amount of time, you'll be fine. Yeast are tougher little buggers than you give them credit for.
 
I used to think about this very thing. Then I toured the White Labs facility and saw the yeastroom from behind a glass wall. It’s clean in there. If your batch is infected I’d look elsewhere.
 
NO man your fine, I had some delivered (two days in the mail) and the package was damaged, I pitched and it's fine. Yeast is fine and strong when pitched, they get weaker as the job finishes and the alcohol then takes over as an astringent. Of course being sanitary and not leaving a block of cheese next to an open fermentor over night is not wise.... But you will be fine. The New Yeast that is bred will be much stronger then any free yeast in your prep area.
 
Inexperience, first time with WL... Starter yeast, 2L flask ready to go. Foil sanatized... action. Didn't realize there was a sanatized inner tube inside the outer wraper. Cut both, poured into the flask... most definitely yeast on the outer wrapper not sanitized that made its way into the flask. Start over?
Not sure what you're saying here. Which part didn't you sanitize, the outer wrapper or the inner pouch?
I always remove the outer wrapper, then sanitize the inner pouch before I cut the top off (sanitized scissors) and pour into the starter vessel. I'm not sure the space between the inner pouch holding the yeast and outer wrapper is sterile. But it may well be.

You can always contact White Labs about it, but be precise to what you did and didn't do.

Calling this thread "White Labs Fail" is certainly a misnomer. I don't see how White Labs failed here. Sounds more like user failure.
 
I do what IslandLizard does. I very carefully cut the top of the outer wrapper and pull out the inside pouch of yeast. I spray it with star-san, spray the scissors I'm going to use to cut them. I spray my fingers too.

Then when the time comes to pitch into the flask, I shake up the yeast, spray both yeast and scissors again, cut and pitch.

I've read from White Labs that the possibility of contamination if you don't do this is slight, but why take the chance? I wouldn't worry at all about your yeast.

My son is a microbiologist; I've asked him about this stuff, and you know what? Your starter was almost certainly infected before you even pitched the yeast. All that dust in the air? Lots of it is....contaminated with bacteria, there's wild yeast floating around, it's a miracle we breathe this stuff in and still survive. Some will have made its way into your starter. But it doesn't matter because the billions and billions of yeast cells outcompete whatever gets in there.

BTW, this is why many brewers work to chill fast and get their wort into an enclosed fermenter as quickly as they reasonably can. They'll keep the kettle covered, etc. It's not a panic, it's just that the faster you get the yeast into the fermenter and going, the better.

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I made a starter last night, brewing today. I even go so far as to oxygenate the starter wort so the yeast in there gets a head start, and I try to time my starter so that I'll pitch it 15-18 hours after it begins. And I'll pitch the entire starter into the wort, no chilling, no decanting. I want that yeast going to town when it is introduced to fermenter and its oxygenated wort. I've had action in the fermenter in as little as 3.5 hours after pitching, and always within about 6 hours. I'm working to ensure that whatever fell into the wort before I closed up the fermenter finds itself facing 150 billion or more hungry yeast cells.
 
I've done a couple of batches of White Labs Irish Ale Yeast, with no starter and it was going like mad within a few hours of pitching. I don't think you have anything to worry about.
 
I always do exactly what you did. Sanitize the outside, sanitize the scissors, cut both pouches at the same time and dump it in. I've never had any problems, even after repitching the yeast several times.
 
I am pretty sure that the idea of the package is exactly the two layered design which minimizes the contact of yeast and the outer world. Everything in between is probably sanitized already so the best way to treat the package is probably cutting the sanitized package just once through both layers. And this is exactly what the instructions from WL suggests. The reason why they changed the package was exactly this: to minimize the possibility of contaminations.
 
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