3068 hefe yeast concern

[cooperville]

Fellas just did my second all grain brew i made a starter of 3068 wyeast wehienstfan yeast and it did its thing for 24 hours before i added it to the brew . from my experience in yeast it was very inactive manufactured 9/01/12 i had no bubbles in the Erlenmeyer (on a stir plate) at all just a very cloudy dark mixture that didnt seem to grow at all i spoke with the girls at wyeast and in the end they said just to roll with it and see how it turns out i was expecting a lot more activity from the starter this is my concern it had been refrigerated since purchasing and i did all things correctly with the starter although prehaps i had a little to much malt extract i used 180 grams for 1 litre of water being my second AG i am hoping it will be fine and perhaps i am being paranoid

any help would be great cheers

i added the yeast about an hour ago but i am not expecting activity until tommorow

[fistwizard]

it pains me to say it but listen to the ladies

give it some time before considering repitching. sounds like the yeast may be a little stressed with the gravity of the starter, but that might yield some favorable banana esters if i'm no mistaken. good luck.

[spiderwrangler]

the amount of activity you end up having in a starter can vary twenty four hours is not an incredibly long time perhaps your yeast was just waking up and getting rolling when you pitched it longer starter time may have given you more growth and krausening in the starter having done one even if the yeast was a bit lacking should help you out in the long run compared to having pitched directly as fistie says some slight level of stress in this yeast may not be as out of place as it would be in others for your starter your gravity would come out to be 1055 so a bit higher than typical for starters but shouldnt be too extreme for the yeast what style are you doing assume its not a straight hefe since you said the starter was so dark what was the original gravity

[snowcapt]

Punctuation, spider, punctuation.

[spiderwrangler]

:jnj Punctuation, spider, punctuation.

just speaking his language i was afraid capitalization or punctuation might make it too difficult for cooper to understand what i was saying

[cooperville]

SW I am doing the hefty-weizen from beer smith recipes I used light malt extract for the starter
pitched last night, this morning no activity im guessing she is no good but it is a little cold in the room where the ferm is .

ferm is reading 20c i will give it 24hrs and then i will have to repitch unfortunately my only option for yeast is london ale 1028 wyeast/safale S04/nottingham danstar so i wont be getting the bannanas and clove cogeners i was after

what do you think these yeasts will bring to a wheat beer recipe probably will have to repitch at this stage

[PSUHomebrewer]

Just to clarify when you said you didn't see many bubbles, are you talking about an airlock or bubbles in the starter. Also did you say you used a stir plate?

Using a starter you don't want to see "fermentation" character (kurizen bubbling foam etc) since you are trying to grow yeast and not make beer. If you are using a stir plate you prevent a kurizen from forming since you are continuously turning over the starter, blowing off CO2, and adding new O2 (why an air lock isn't a great choice for starters). The best characteristics to look for is a nice peanut butter color, a milk to cream like consistency, and rapid flocculation when you turn off the stirring. These characteristics are signs of good healthy yeast growth.

It does seem odd that it is almost the complete opposite of what we want when fermenting, but remember a starter is not for fermenting but building yeast cells and health.

[cooperville]

The starter was not peanut in color as I was expecting but actually quite dark I only used sanitizer foil over the erlynmeyer
So far no activity in the ferm so I will let you know how it goes
Thanks for the help