Yeast Starter a Dud

[Guyute]

I ordered some yeast online about a month ago, and it arrived after being in transit for about 6 days and sat on my porch for a few hours on a 90 degree day.

Sunday morning I decided to make a yeast starter, and I have yet to see any real activity. Definitely no krausen, just a little bit of gas escaping from the growler I'm using.

Wouldn't I have seen something substantial by now? Its been 60 hours or so since I pitched it. According to How to Brew, the krausen can be easy to miss. Think it happened while I wasn't watching?

I was worried the yeast got too hot for too long while it was being shipped to my door. Would that kill it?

thanks

 

[Revrin]

Was the yeast liquid and was it shipped in styrafoam?

 

[Guyute]

It was in a glass tube. They said they would send it in a cold pack, but it was just thrown in not refrigerated.

 

[Revrin]

How warm was the yeast compared to the starter when you pitched. They should be within a few degrees of eachother. There should also be a recomended pitching temp. for the particular yeast.

 

[Revrin]

You didn't happen to take any gravity readings of the starter wort before you pitched?

 

[Guyute]

The yeast was cool, maybe an hour or so out of the fridge when I pitched it. The wort was cooled to about 75. No I didn't take a gravity reading, that would have been a good idea though.

 

[cervezarara]

If it fermented, you should see a yeast cake at the bottom of the growler about 1/2" thick. This should be a very light band at the bottom of the vessel.

 

[Guyute]

Thanks for the responses. There is barely anything at the bottom of the growler, maybe 1/16th of an inch of sediment. Think I'll just get some new yeast before I brew this batch.

 

[Revvy]

Activity in a starter really only means one thing and one thing only.

It doesn't matter one blip in your fermenter or your starter flask if the airlock bubbles or not (if you are using an airlock and not tinfoil if you are using tinfoil, you aren't getting bibbling anyway,) or if you see a krauzen. In fact starter fermentation are some of the fastest or slowest but most importantly, the most boring fermentations out there. Usually it's done withing a few hours of yeast pitch...usually overnight when we are sleeping, and the starter looks like nothing ever happened...except for the little band at the bottom. Or it can take awhile...but either way there's often no "activity" whatsoever....

I usually run my stirplate for the first 24 hours, then shut it down, if you are spinning your starter it is really hard to get a krausen to form anyway, since it's all spinning, and there's often a head of foam on it from the movement.


All that really matters is that creamy band o yeast at the bottom.

This is a chilled sample so it's flocculated, but even with an unchilled sample you should see a band of yeast at the bottom. Here's an unchilled version

Same thing, a band.

As it is I've only ever seen two or three krausens actually on my starter (one blew off a bunch of krausen and knocked the tinfoil off the flask,) and the evidence of one on the flask at the "waterline" once. But I've never not had a starter take off.

Look for the yeast at the bottom, don't worry what it looks like on top.

If you have yeast on the bottom....that's all you really need.

If it looks anything like that, your are ready to either feed it again, or use it.

 

[Revvy]

Thanks for the responses. There is barely anything at the bottom of the growler, maybe 1/16th of an inch of sediment. Think I'll just get some new yeast before I brew this batch.

If there's any sediment, then you have a starter....People always thing the line of sediment is smaller than they think...Feed it some more wort.

 

[Guyute]

I just gave it another look, and there is probably a good 1/4 inch sediment, so I guess all is good. I can't brew till Friday night though, (today is wednesday), should I leave it out or put it in the fridge until then? Maybe I should have timed this better

 

[statseeker]

Feed it again.