Black Wyeast!

[JasonY]

Well I have 40L of APA sitting in the fridge chilling down to 20degC for pitching tomorrow. Bought a brand new wyeast 1056 American ale to go into them (sep 06 so fresh). Smacked the pack and it swelled within 4 hours. Just drew off 3 - 4L of wort to step this up overnight and when I added the wyeast it was BLACK!

Never seen this before so I tipped a bit on my palm and tasted it, certainly tasted fine? Anybody ever seen this before, are wyeast randomly using stout as there wort in smack packs.

I am kinda worried that this could stuff 40L of beer and make me and possibly the perth case swap very unhappy. Must be nice and black as the starters also darkened noticeably after adding.

 

[Ross]

I'd be really surprised if there's anything wrong with it - but that's certainly a new one on me...

Cheers Ross...

 

[Kai]

I'd fire up the starter anyway, but I'd be tasting it. I associate black or brown with less-than-healthy yeast.

 

[Guest Lurker]

Weird. Havent seen that before. Black compounds I would associate with sulfur products. Any eggy smells? Yeasts do produce sulfur to try to generate reducing conditions if they are stressed, lager yeasts do it because they dont actually like being at low temps. Hopefully the yeasties in your starter are now happy and not trying to produce sulfur, but I would give it a good sniff. But hey, your case contribution cant be any worse than the Emu Export from Deebee and the Bintang from me.

 

[JasonY]

Yes will certainly be tasting these before pitching! I also have sent off an email to Wyeast with the batch number to see if they can tell me anything about it. I have a backup US56 that I may pitch into half of the wort if I get too worried.

 

[dr K]

This is incredidly bad..lock those starters up and let aquis know ASAP (like yesterday)aquis. Then straight away let wyeast Wyeastknow.
An alert was sent out from Master Brewer's of the Americas mmba as well as The Seible Institute Sieble Alert recently about a number of random sightings of a rouge yeast strain, as MBAD said..is this the phylloxera of the beer trade ??..its origin is toatlly unknown as it its method of transport.
No joke...this strain, if escaped could destroy the entire beer industry.
I ahve not posted a specific link as I have to find it and will post when I do...but right now,...no that ain't stout wort..it is indeed the horsemen of the apocalypse...

Kurzt

 

[BrissyBrew]

Dr_K would love to see the specific links.

 

[warrenlw63]

Just drew off 3 - 4L of wort to step this up overnight and when I added the wyeast it was BLACK!

Jason I'm probably asking a couple of stupid questions however; Just wondering how/where you made your starter wort and have you viewed any without the yeast in it?

Also, what do you sanitise your starter bottles and equipment with? Would there be any chance you use iodophor and a drop possibly tainted the starter? As I said probably all stupid questions but worth asking nonetheless.

If it was me I'd step some of your starter up into a another bottle with some malt extract that's independent of the wort you used. Just see if the same thing occurs again.

Warren -

 

[JasonY]

Just drew off 3 - 4L of wort to step this up overnight and when I added the wyeast it was BLACK!

Jason I'm probably asking a couple of stupid questions however; Just wondering how/where you made your starter wort and have you viewed any without the yeast in it?

Also, what do you sanitise your starter bottles and equipment with? Would there be any chance you use iodophor and a drop possibly tainted the starter? As I said probably all stupid questions but worth asking nonetheless.

If it was me I'd step some of your starter up into a another bottle with some malt extract that's independent of the wort you used. Just see if the same thing occurs again.

Warren -

My starter wort is the main wort. Being a disorganised bugger I just went ahead and brewed 40L of APA without a starter ready. To make up for my bad ways I elected to buy a brand new smack pack and use this in 3L of the main wort to step this up and pitch today. So I have 40L of wort to look at and it was not this dark. However after leaving this overnight the beer did lighten up a bit so I can only assume it is the yeast sediment in the smack pack that was blackish. I quick swirl and the beer darkens again?

I could try and blame the black smoke which came from my drill and HLT shorting out but that would be getting a little far fetched. Its been one of those brew days I think.

I use idophor but rinse so there is no was it is coming into play.

It has a nice white krausen so I will let it ferment until after work and then drink some to make sure its ok and then it will be pitched - fingers x'd

 

[JasonY]

Well just tried the starters and they tasted fine, pretty normal aside from the color thing initially. Must have been worrying about nothing. As this is my xmas case beer I am sure I will get plenty of feedback if it was off

 

[JasonY]

Well got an email from WYeast and it seems that all is well so I can rest easier now can't see a problem in quoting their response here as they have addressed my query.

I am sorry to hear you had this problem, especially to the extent it made your beer this dark. During this week of yeast production we had some wort which came out darker than normal (the media in which we propagate the yeast in, not the media inside the smack pack). This problem was corrected and you will not see this dark yeast in the future. Please let me know if you have other questions and if there is anything else we can do for you.