Yeast slurry too old?

[knollybru]

I have small mason jar of yeast that's now 5 months old that harvested from a previous starter. I did the Brulosphy method of yeast harvesting. Obviously I would make starter before using. Maybe a step starter?

I've used this method many times but never waited this long between brew days. Is it too old?

 

[Calder]

I've done it a number of times with 2 year old samples from starters. 2 weeks ago I did it with 30 month old WLP550, which I plan to use this weekend. I have also saved a fresh sample for future use.

 

[knollybru]

Wow. That's pretty old. I think I might try doing a 1L starter and build it up. Just to make sure it's still viable. Thanks for the vote o confidence @Calder

 

[Neptune]

I just brewed a 10 gal IPA and pitched into two seperate ferment buckets... One mason jar was S-05 and one was WY1318. Both jars were at least 5 months old (harvested slurry) possibly approaching 7 months old (real good record keeping, I know).

Anyway, I forgot to make starters and just threw them in the buckets (once they were up to temp)... The WY1318 was bubbling away within 36 hours... The S-05 had zero activity going into day #3 so I top cropped off the WY1318 and threw it in the bucket and and had activity within 2 hours.

I'm a bit surprised that it took off so quick... Possibility that the S-05 was working (although it didn't look like it was going anywhere AT ALL when I threw the krausen on top). Is that normal?

Hope that made sense... hope it was helpful and sorry for possibly hijacking the thread.

 

[Mer-man]

You can expect significant lag time, as you probably only have a small amount of viable yeast with questionable vitality, but . . . it will work.

I think it is great that you harvested a starter, as that starts you with the least potential for contamination (all other things equal) for a sample.