Strange looking 1968 London ESB

560sdl · July 25, 2012, 2:30am

I am getting ready to brew my first ESB. I made a starter this morning for Wyeast 1968 London ESB yeast. I get home from work and I swear the flask looks like I am mixing up egg drop soup. The yeast appears very stringy? Clumpy? Not sure how to describe it. Is this in any way normal? The smack pack was pretty fresh (6/12/12) and I bought it from a good local LHBS.

I used some second runnings from a brew a few weeks ago, but it smelled and looked fine. I boiled and added some DME this am and everything was normal. In fact, 2/3 of that wort went into making the first round of a lager starter from some older harvested yeast. Same boil, just poured into different starter vessels and added different yeast. The lager yeast is slow to get started as expected, but the 1968 is scary looking stuff.

brwrboy69 · July 25, 2012, 10:29am

This is normal. It’s a very flocculent yeast.

flip · July 25, 2012, 12:52pm

Yep, that is normal. It is near impossible to wash that yeast as it drops out faster than the trub. You’ll have a very clear beer quite quickly using that yeast.

dobe12 · July 25, 2012, 12:59pm

Kinda like this?

http://youtu.be/mbXiQa72yfI

Yeah, it’s a crazy yeast. Can’t rinse it at all. I tried 2x. But now that I think about it, maybe it could be rinsed in reverse? Meaning instead of letting the trub fall out and then pouring the yeast off into a new jar… maybe you could let the yeast drop out first and then just pour off the trub… leaving the yeast behind?

560sdl · July 25, 2012, 1:04pm

It is the weirdest thing to watch it settle down when taking it off the stir plate.

560sdl · July 25, 2012, 1:07pm

[quote=“dobe12”]Kinda like this?

http://youtu.be/mbXiQa72yfI

Yeah, it’s a crazy yeast. Can’t rinse it at all. I tried 2x. But now that I think about it, maybe it could be rinsed in reverse? Meaning instead of letting the trub fall out and then pouring the yeast off into a new jar… maybe you could let the yeast drop out first and then just pour off the trub… leaving the yeast behind?[/quote]

Yea, exactly like that! I took some photos and was going to post, but you saved me the trouble, thanks. It is really strange.

Maybe you could put it on a stir plate and rack the yeast off to harvest it?

goldenchild · July 26, 2012, 5:03pm

I did two starters of this the other day and like you guys said very clumpy even when your pouring it from the smack pack. Go Yeast!