So basically wondering if the starsan has killed it, as it's meant to be a sterilizing agent, or if it's niftily contained clean yeast under a sterile barrier, given yeast can be "acid washed" to clean out crud/dead cells and kill other infective microbes.
I too have wondered about this - great minds, hey! [emoji6] However, I've never bothered to investigate or test further.
Fwiw, I'm inclined to think the starsan will/should kill off the yeast. For 2 reasons:
1) Because it's designed to be a universal sterilizing agent
2) we'd have serious issues with cross contamination of yeast strains (I'm looking at you, Belgian yeasts!) if it didn't kill off yeast as well.
Without doing some reading, I'd guess the acid used in the yeast acid wash is a more chemically neutral or mild strength molecule (ie: a weak proton donor), whereas the phosphoric acid that I think makes up the starsan is a very very strong proton donor (I believe) so it will gradually attack everything that's susceptible to chemical attack.
Definitely worth a quick little experiment to test this though [emoji41]
One thought: given the starsan would gradually be consumed by it's sterilizing action (normally it's in such vast "numerical" excess this isn't relevant to our regular use), I wonder if you used sterile water with a tiny bit of starsan in it, whether you'd have a mild sanitizing action (initially at least), that gradually accumulates the yeast within.
No major step forward but it helps ensure your sterile/distiller water is that little bit more sterile.
