after sitting for a long time, it ususally takes 24 to 48 hours for the yeast to work through the lag phase. The 10 fold step up also takes a while as the yeast have to multiply (the lag phase) before active fermentation is visible.
Note: if after 48 hours you have not seen active fermentation, take a gravity reading. I have sometimes had starters on the stir plate that nevery throw a foamy head… they just ferment out to 1.012… with no visible signs.
Glad to hear things kicked off for you, and it is another reason I always like to make a starter before pitching. The yeast will startup much faster in the beer now, and you KNOW you have active yeast!
Six months is old for a BRY 96 (a.k.a. Ballantine Beer, Sierra Nevada “Chico,” Wyeast 1056, White Labs WLP001, and Fermentis US-05) culture. BRY 96 is an unstable yeast strain, and most yeast strains are down to 25% viability at 120 days.
Two liters is far too much media for a crop that is that old. Plus, a 2L starter is unnecessary unless one is pitching ten gallons of wort or a high gravity five gallon batch.
Mark, I am brewing a Pliny the Elder clone that typically 1.072 - 1.078 depending on crush.
It’s moving along well now, perhaps too little viable yeast in the beginning.
Thinking back, the bottle of yeast is at least 6 months old. A friend at a local brewery gave me a Nalgene bottle of yeast drawn from the bottom of their conical.
I have found that this strain is unstable on subsequent pitches after storage. I don’t have a lab grade environment, so I tend not to use it much for re-pitching.
So glad this post is going on right now. I am sitting on 2 quart jars of wlp001 under beer right now that I harvested a while back(going on almost 4 months now) the batch I harvested them for has gotten pushed back several times due to summer time fun. I now will plan on using fresh packs of 05 rather than try to get these going. They were the first attempt on my part for harvesting yeast, so the responses here, I will let them go as the beer they were going to ferment is way too big to take a chance on (1.100)
Frank, why not try a starter with what you have? My starter was slow to take off, it is rocking and rolling right now. I am confident the yeast is still good, just older and dormant for a while. A fresh dose of wort resuscitated the slurry.
I routinely re-pitch my yeast.
I try to re-use it within 4 weeks of harvest, I re-pitch WLP001 10-12 times (never pushed it past that number) without any issues. However, the limit for me on WLP002 is 4-5 times before I get some kind of issue with the fermentation.
The issue is usually some kind of off flavor.
Not sure if I’m picking up some kind of contamination in the yeast, or what, since the off flavors aren’t the same each time.
I just never have the issue with WLP001.
Do you top-crop the Fullers or just harvest from the trub? That stuff is so damn flocculant that you might just be getting progressively more flocculant yeast out of the cake each time and ending up with yeast that drops before it cleans up all its diacetyl or acetaldehyde.
The only way that I could see the crop becoming more flocculent is by cropping early, or by attempting to harvest the entire contents of one’s fermentation vessel.
I harvest all my yeast from the bottom of the fermenter - a carboy in this case.
Transfer the beer to a keg, sanitize the mouth of the carboy, pour yeast/trub into sanitized mason jar.
I usually harvest a quart of yeast and then use what I need in the next batch of beer.
