harvested yeast

I brewed yesterday and used some harvested 05 yeast. I forgot to make a starter, so I just brought the harvested yeast up to room temp and pitched. The yeast had been in my fridge for about 4 weeks. A fellow brewer told me today that the yeast won’t work because it had been kept too long and I would have needed a starter.

My two questions:

  1. How long should I wait to see airlock activity before pitching more yeast?

  2. If I pitch more yeast is it ok to use a diff yeast (I have a packet of dry Mounton’s on hand) or should I make a run to the brew store and buy my original 05 yeast and use that?

Thanks

How much of it did you pitch? What volume? And what’s the OG of your brew?

And your bud is full of sh*t. That yeast is very viable at just 4 weeks in the fridge. If you pitched enough volume there will be enough viable cells in it. It’ll possibly take a day or so to wake them up, but shouldn’t be a problem. I just did the same thing with 2 week old yeast and it look less than 12 hours.

1.053 OG. I pitched about 1.5 cups of slurry. It is sitting at 64 deg. The rest of my AG process went exactly as planned, it is just that I forgot to make the starter. It was been about 26 hrs and no activity. I brewed a 5.5 gal batch and my primary is 7.9 gal.

I’m 100% certain you are fine. It may take 72hr (give or take) for activity to show.

Absolutely will not have a problem, unless the yeast is from a 6 month primary, originally.

The other day I counted the viability of a slury that I have had for months in the fridge. It was at 60%! You are fine.

Tomorrow I will have a blog post detailing the counting here:

http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/

Thanks. The airlock was bubbling hapily away this morning. So lag time was more than 24 hrs but less than 36 hrs after pitching. Thanks for all the info.

I do have a follow-up question: If I have harvested yeast that has been sitting in the fridge for an extended period of time, is there a downside to just pitching more of an older yeast as opposed to making a starter?

[quote=“dforlow”]Thanks. The airlock was bubbling hapily away this morning. So lag time was more than 24 hrs but less than 36 hrs after pitching. Thanks for all the info.

I do have a follow-up question: If I have harvested yeast that has been sitting in the fridge for an extended period of time, is there a downside to just pitching more of an older yeast as opposed to making a starter?[/quote]
If I’m lazy, or had a spontaneous brewday, or simply forgot the starter, I will use 2/3 of a cake that is 2 months old without worry. Sometimes by doing this, it will result in hardier fermentation (the guys that are still viable are really, really strong and hungry!). I’ve noticed, especially with my harvested nottingham, the yeast can get you well into the 1.000’s.