Tired Yeast-Fact or Fiction

Ingredients
1

Apologies if this posts twice as I’m on a plane and it doesn’t seem like my first post made it.

Anyway, I brewed a quad with some Westvleteren yeast I propagated from a bottle.  It took the beer from 1.100 to 1.018 or about 12% ABV.

The other day I brewed a pale ale and could not find the US-05 I just bought so I tossed in the washed Westy yeast.  No activity after 24 hours and I left for a trip and am now wondering how it is doing.

Which led me to is the thought of yeast being “tired” after a big brew fact or fiction?  What say the forum?

And what do you think happened to my pale ale.  Winner gets a beer… :smiley:

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I’ll take a shot.

I would think there would more old, injured, less vigorous yeast after a high gravity ferment.

They don’t like high levels of alcohol and they were living in a pretty high level alcohol environment.

They likely reproduced more due to the higher food availability and each cell is only able to reproduce a finite number of times.

The higher osmotic pressure they experienced when first introduced to the wort is hard on their systems and likely led to less overall health and vigor.

That being said, I think what happened to your pale ale is that it’s just fine. probably a little slow to take off as the actual cell count was lower than ideal but when you return you will find it all happy happy and fermented.

When I win will it be the quad or the pale?

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My experience is that it’s fact, but tired does not equal dead.  It might work, and if it does, it might work more or less well.  You may have a great pale ale, or it may be underattenuated and estery.  I guess the question is “Are you feeling lucky?”.

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LOL, thanks for not putting the “punk” on there… :wink:

I think it will be fine.  Was killing time on a cross country flight and wanted some of my brewing brothers thoughts.

I have 5G with some 3rd gen 1056 and 5G with the Westy.  Should be an interesting comparison.

Mort, winners choice!

Dave

5

oh in that case. quad for sure.

6

I’ll bring three to the NHC for us.  You and Denny going this year?

Dave

7

Barring another unexpected event like last year, I’ll be there!

8

No need for anything like that again…see you boys there for a quad on me!  A good kick-off beverage if I do say so myself.

9

Good advice from all.  I’ll be curious to hear how it turns out.

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Looks to be just fine.  Got a nice krausen ring and smells great.

Dave

11

Great sign, obviously!  I’d be really curious to know the final taste profile, comparing a standard APA to a Belgian Pale Ale -  because 1762 is such a great yeast . It’ll be good, whatever it is.

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I also forgot that since it’s so cold outside, it’s also a few degrees colder under my bar in the basement.  Instead of 65F it’s 61F.  That would definitely slow things down a bit.

Looking forward to this one.  I’m going to let it go low and slow for another week and then burn it out at 68F upstairs.

Dave

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One more thing I’m psyched about with this brew is it’s my SNPA recipe but with Simcoe for flavor instead of Cascade.  So Perle, Simcoe, Cascade and I need to decide on a dry hop.  Probably stay with Cascade so I can see how the Simcoe changes the recipe on it’s own.  Pretty pumped about this combined with the Westy comparison. Man I love brewing… :slight_smile:

Dave

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I like ~ 2 or 2.5 oz of dry hops for APA.  It’d be hard to go wrong with an oz each of Cascade and Simcoe - kind of reinforce the flavor additions.

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Not a bad idea.  Splitting the dry hop 50/50.  I’ll have to think about that.  Flavor was Simcoe at 15 and aroma was Cascade at 1 but I like the thought a lot…

Dave