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So in planning another Bitter and I have a smack pack of Wyeast 1968 London ESB but when I enter the yeast date on the yeast pitch calculators it tells me the viability is 0%. The date is Oct 9 2013. I just activated it and if it swells I am planning on doing a starter. Am I wasting my time? Can I rebuild it?

if it swells its working. just finished a starter with the same yeast. the bag was too close to the compreseer coils in the fridge and froze. thawed it out and activated it. minimal swell on the bag still decided to do the starter anyway took some time to get working but im currently looking at a nice pile of yeast at the bottom of the flask. cant speak for the health but it was definitely working. (dated from dec/13)

That's good to hear. If it swells maybe I'll do a two step starter just in case.

The viability might be a bit on the low side.

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I bought a Scottish Ale (1728 I think) at NG on Friday night. Didn't even look at the date until I got home. November 2013. Smacked it Friday night before bed and in the morning absolutely nothing. So I put my Off Kilter 80/- plans in hold and brewed a pale ale with US-05.

NG was nice enough to take the yeast back on Sunday (which they apparently don't normally do) for store credit on the basis that it's past 6 months and they didn't warn me.

What I was told, however, and some Googling backs this up to an extent, is that Wyeast themselves say full activation can take as long as 24 hours for each month old that the yeast is. She said she'll put it aside and expects it to have come to life by this coming Saturday.



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I'd definitely suggest a two step starter. Swelling is a good way to check the viability, and you could also use the first starter as an indication: air lock action and volume of the yeast in the flask (when allowed to stop stirring).

It's puffing up now but not as much as usual. I'll wait and throw it into a starte tomorrow and see how it goes. I'll make an education out of it. It's almost an hour and a half for me to get to NG so I'm gonna keep trying to revive this one. Probably two stage. Well three stage if you include the smack pack.

Ok so I'm well into second stage of starter and it's looking clumpy. This is Wyeast 1968 Lindon ESB. I swirrled the jug and this is what it looks like. Should I be concerned? Anyone else had this before? Maybe it's normal and I'm just over thinking things now.

Looks like my last 1968 starter.

Looks like Garrison beer.

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Beer dropped clear, not like the snowy Garrison

Yeah that yeast floculates like that, no problems.