Why does my starter look like egg drop soup?

[MrMeans]

So I made a starter last night. Its been going for about 18 hours. The yeast is WLP002 English Ale and it was packaged on Sept 29th. Generally before I pour my yeast out of the vial I shake it up to get all of the cells in suspension. Upon doing so this yeast was very "chunky" for lack of a better term and stayed in the form of a heterogeneous solution. I figured the stirplate would break up my chunks so I threw it in some 1.040 wort and let it go over night. This morning I had 2000 mL of egg drop soup. Any idea what is going on here? Keep in mind it was like this out of the vial.

 

[flars]

I like egg drop soup!

From the White Labs site.
You have described our English Ale yeast to the tee. WLP002 is highly flocculent yeast and "coagulates” together; it is totally normal.

Exactly what you are seeing.

 

[ChefRex]

Normal

 

[Yooper]

I always say that WLP002 looks like cottage cheese, but you're right- I see egg drop soup!

 

[ChefRex]

I always say that WLP002 looks like cottage cheese, but you're right- I see egg drop soup!

Did the quart shaped beaker help

 

[MrMeans]

My wife gets the credit for the egg drop soup reference. Glad to hear I don't have some kind of weird mutant yeast, its my first time using this strain. I am making a stout and when I make it in the summer I use WLP90 because of how low the ester profile is even at high temps. My ferm chamber struggles to stay at 70 during the hot Arizona summer. When its cold I have been using the wyest irish ale yeast. Now that its cool I can experiment with other yeasts and see what that does to the flavor. The WLP90 is great for hoppy beers but I feel that you lose a lot of your malt profile with it in maltier brews.

Cheers!

 

[iaefebs]

Egg drop soup is how I've always described highly flocculent yeast on a stir plate. Glad to see another egg drop soup reference.

 

[j1n]

Need some general tso chicken to go with your egg drop soup.