Should I Pitch My Starter?

[bkmad]

I'm trying to brew a belgian blonde to use up some yeast from a belgian strong dark ale I did a little while ago. I harvested about 1 cup of yeast from the bottom of the fermenter and put it in a stubby and stuck it in the fridge. I'd read that yeast can be stored like this for a few weeks. Anyway its taken me about 8 weeks to get around to doing this brew, not the 2 that I originally planned. :angry:

I've got 20L of wort in the fermenter ready to go and a starter thats been going for about 12 hours. Problem is the starter only has a very thin film of healthy looking yeast, on top of a lot of brown sludge (dead yeast I'm guessing). It seems that my stubby of yeast has pretty much died in the fridge, except a few cells which are still going.

So the big question is, will the brown sludge damage my beer if I pitch this starter? I cant see any way of seperating the sludge from the healthy yeast, so the lot would have to go in. I've had a taste, and it tastes like a starter, if a little sweet still so obviously the live yeast hasn't quite finished yet.

My alternative is to head down to big-w and buy a kit for its yeast as I foolishly don't have any backups in the fridge right now and no homebrew shops are open on a sunday.

 

[Pennywise]

I'd wait a bit if the starter hasn't fully kicked off yet. Wait till tonight to pitch I reckon, you should have a little more yeast at least if it's still got some fermenting to do

 

[Tony]

There is a good chance most of the slurry you saved in the first place was dead yeast....... but it contains a heap of live cells. Some will have dies in storage as well.

I used to use this method and never had any problems when pitching the starter with a layer of the old stuff under the creamy new yeast. All the dead stuff will simply settle out.

I say pitch it!

 

[bkmad]

Well thats enough reassurance for me, I'll give it a few more hours to get through the starter a bit more and then I'm pitching! :beer:

 

[RdeVjun]

Yes, you could pitch it but ideally I'd be stepping it up a couple of times first, 12 hours is not really long enough for it to grow out, while it also would also give you an opportunity to remove some of the sludge. Stepping up will allow it to multiply to a decent population, but also give you a chance to see if it is clean, i.e. not infected. Obviously you've got a fermenter full of un- inoculated wort at a grave risk of infection though, so the sooner it gets some yeast into it the better.

The sludge is probably not too much to be worrying about, just some more yeast cake/ slurry- it will settle out.

It is a bugger when the yeast holds up production, good luck with it! :icon_cheers: