A family member got me a gift certificate to NorthernBrewer as a gift. I order up some ingredients to attempt an Edmund Fitzgerald clone (or some kind of porter at least) and they arrived today. As I assumed, the White Labs WLP013 was frozen solid. What are my options here? Defrost and pitch it? Toss it and buy a new yeast? Also, now that I thin of it, what impact will the freezing temps have on the 2 oz. of hops that came along with this delivery? Thanks in advance!
I'm no expert on yeast so I won't comment on that. But the hops are fine, most people (my self included) store their hops in the freezer to preserve freshness
If you have a B&M option to go buy a new vial, I'd just do that. It would probably cost you close to as much in DME to properly step up a good cell count as it would to just go buy another vial and do a starter from there. There is probably some live yeast in there but it's mostly gonna be dead. You could defrost and throw it in the boil as nutrient though.
I once put yeast in my freezer instead of my fridge. I thawed it out and pitched anyway without a starter. After 3 days of no action I pitched some dry yeast.
If it was really frozen solid, I personally wouldn't waste starter wort attempting to find out if there's anything left alive.
Just to add to this - you can freeze yeast - it is done all the time - but there needs to be a cryoprotectant added to the wort - like glycerin or DMSO - to prevent the cells from dying during the freeze/thaw process. Not that this helps you in this case, sorry!
If it was rare yeast, I would. I got some ECY04 Brett and my father in law plugged the chest freezer in bypassing the temp controller when he was doing some wiring for me, freezing my flask. I successfully revived it easily. Maybe Brett is hardier, I don't know. That said, it's cheap and easy to replace nearby, do it. DME isn't free.
Steve had a bunch of WLP013 yesterday (doing my porter on Sunday weather permitting so I grabbed one)...
