Stepping up a starter of Wyeast 1968, and have been reading that the chunky “egg drop soup” appearance is normal. I don’t have a stir plate, so semi-frequently agitate the culture. However, I poured my small 1-2 cup volume to a larger container, not only was it chunky, but poured like egg drop soup also. Stringy, almost snotty. Is THIS also part of the normal starter appearance/behavior, or should I be worried??
The smell was not terrible/rancid. And the feel of some of it (the leftovers after I transferred) wasn’t egregiously nasty. In all of the posts I could find, the descriptions cover the look of the starter and chunks, and not any stringy/slimy looking characteristics.
Wanted to poll the room and see if this is also normal.
thanks for any help/reassurances LOL
I wouldn’t say that any of what you’re describing is unusual. 1968 is weird stuff, but there’s nothing like it in the flavor department and it drops like a rock when it’s done fermenting.
Thanks. Honestly, the stringiness when pouring it kinda freaked me out.
The other thing is that I had started this from a frozen stock, streaked a plate and picked a colony. It took a bit longer than I had expected to see visible activity, to the point where I was going to start over, when it seemed to take off. But it took at least 3-4 days. So in the back of my mind, sitting that long before seeing the yeast “take over” I was a little concerned that other bugs might have had time to start growing.
Your description is pretty much my experience with 1968. Starters never really smell great to so that seems fairly normal too.
I hope it works well for you.
Paul
I also gete some clumpiness with one of the White Lab yeasts (can’t remember if it is WLP002 or WLP004). I was concerned the first time I used it but the beer came out fine.
Large flocs are definitely normal for 1968, but if the starter was ropey I’d start over. Did you go straight from the single colony to the 1-2 cup starter? I’d normally start with more like 50 mL to hopefully avoid the long lag time.
I went into about 5mL from the colony. not a ton of activity, but there was clearly some yeast. went from there into ~half a cup, and so on.
FWIW, I have had it look vaguely like you are stirring Parmesan cheese into minestrone soup. If that’s what you mean by “stringy,” then that’s normal to me with 1968.