Bottle Harvested?

[volan]

OK, This is my first post here. So first off, thanks to everyone for contributing a place like this for me to post!

Here is my dilemma, early in January I decided I wanted to brew a really clean pale ale. So I harvested some pacman out of a Dead Guy bomber and a Santa's Private Reserve bomber. Everything went pretty well and I stepped it up until I had about a quart of starter after 14 days. It developed a nice krausen and then when it started to ferment less vigorously I transferred it to a sanitized 51oz. Baltica PET bottle and stuck it in the fridge (@ 36F). It's been in there since January 20th. It smelled like a super-yeasty bottle of Rogue when I transferred it to the PET, so I am relatively certain that it is not infected in any way.

The odd thing is that there has been no fermentation in the bottle since. I usually see the bottle about to burst after a day or 2 in the fridge when I harvest yeast from the bottom of my fermenter. Is this normal? Can Healthy yeast cells be that dormant? or have I killed the yeast somehow?

The real reason for the query is that I have now purchased the newly available smack-pack of Pacman to keep on hand if I need it, but I'm wondering if I should just pitch the Smack-Pack and forget about the Harvested Yeast if there is a possibility that they are less than viable...

Any advice would totally rule. Thanks!

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[drtrout]

It's hard to say not seeing your setup, but if the starter was fermenting well...I'd say you are fine! Maybe it had just fermented out the sugar and there wasn't anything else to eat, so it went dormant on you. I've had bottles ready to burst from harvested yeast as you stated, but I've had some where the yeast just settles and "goes to sleep" until I give it more sugar to eat.

I am curious too as to why you refrigerated if you are brewing soon. I have refrigerated yeast harvested from carboys if I don't plan to use it right away, but I don't usually refrigerate starters.

I'd gamble and brew and pitch your starter. Watch closely. If you don't have bubbling within 8 to 12 hours, smack your pack of pacman as backup. If your starter is viable...you'll most likely have good bubbling within less than 8 hours. Or...pitch in some safale 04 or 05 (I always keep 2 or more packs on hand as insurance) and ferment your beer with this. I know it's not what you were after, but it will be good beer. Try the pacman smack pak on the next brew then...

GOOD LUCK!

[volan]

Thanks for the great info.

I put it in the fridge because I didn't know when I'd get around to brewing this batch and it happened about 2 weeks earlier than I was expecting it to be.

I think it did eat all of the sugars out and just go dormant. I took it out last night and suspended the yeasties and they started to build some pressure in the bottle. I think they are pretty viable since once they got up to 60 degrees they started to build pressure quickly.

So the plan is to give them a bit of dme to eat over the next day or so and pitch it on Sunday (brew day).

Thanks again!