How long without yeast will wort last?

Lol it’s probably got weird shit it in already if it didn’t work. What makes you believe it didn’t work? Have you checked a gravity reading?

I’ll say this over and over. Always have dry yeast in your fridge..::

 

"Always have dry yeast in your fridge"

That is the 'answer' right there!

Cheers!

 

Just repitch when it comes. Make a starter before you do if you want to be really careful. It'll be fine. Relax. Have a homebrew.

Edit: If you're in southern states and ordering yeast online spend the $1 and have them bundled with an ice pack. And always have yeast on hand. I believe that's been mentioned

 

how are you storing the wort?
it won't be good very long at room temperature

i've keep wort for speise in the fridge for 2 weeks w/out issues
can you keep it chilled?

 

Boil the wort for 5 minutes again before you re-pitch. There is almost definitely something else wild in there after so long, but easy to kill.

 

I believe I have heard that those no-chill folks Down Under have been known to store wort in Jerry cans for surprisingly long times. Sanitation would have to be spot on. Maybe there is oxidation risk if it has sat in a fermenter. It lost the "it" factor that makes the LODO folks wax poetically, and maybe even went bad. These concerns make me think I'd just prefer to start over, but I also wouldn't be surprised if Brulosophy mimicked this scenario and their tasters could not detect a significant difference between the beers. Do you want to throw good yeast on top of possibly bad wort to save time or money, or maybe just to experiment to see what you get? Then go for it. If you want to do what you can to ensure you'll make good beer, maybe start over. And pick up some dry yeast as a back up.

 

The point about sanitation is really important. One thing that might not be obvious is that in an ordinary fermentation, where the yeast is pitched shortly after cooling the wort, the beer very rapidly becomes an inhospitable environment for pathogens. This isn't just because of alcohol - once the yeast get going, the pH drops pretty quickly, putting the beer into the safe zone where things like Clostridium botulinum (the bacteria that causes botulism) can't grow. This is the reason for the common saying, which is usually true, that although your beer can be infected in a way that makes it very unpleasant to drink, nothing can grow in beer that will kill you. That statement is true or true-ish for beer that is within normal ABV and pH parameters. It is definitely not true for unfermented wort stored at room temperature for long periods (unless, of course, it's been heated to a point that would destroy spores, e.g. in a high-pressure canning process). And by the way, C. botulinum produces spores that can survive boiling. The botulinum toxin, however, is quickly denatured at boiling temperature.

So I agree with dmtaylor that if you want to use this wort, you should re-boil it. You don't need to do a full 60-minute boil, just give it a good 10-15 minutes at full boil, and then treat it like any other wort.

But I also agree with pweis909 that you might consider just starting over.

 

Which yeast company made this yeast?

I have been homebrewing with Wyeast yeast products for over 25 years and I had three packs that were manufactured in 2020 that were duds. Heretofore I have never had any problems with Wyeast before. None of those packs were subjected to high heat and the last pack was purchased at my LHBS where the yeast was kept cold from the factory to the LHBS and when I took it from the store I placed it in a cooler (with ice pack) in my car. When I came home I immediately placed that pack in the refrigerator. The day prior to brew day I smacked it and there was zero activity (i.e., the pack did not expand even a little bit). This pack was completely dead.

'Something' is off with Wyeast these days.

Cheers!

 

Funny... I've been saying the same thing about White Labs lately.

On the other hand, I have been using dried yeasts about 90% of the time for the past several years. I would say you can never go wrong with dried yeasts... except that you can there too. I've identified several great dried yeasts, and several that were not great at all and I will never use again. But at least they're simple to store and consistent in performance, as compared with liquid yeasts.

 

Just to clarify, you have purchased some White Labs products were all of the yeast cells were dead?

I am a fan of dry yeast and for beer styles where there is a 'good' dry yeast available I will personally go that way. Last year I brewed 18 batches and I used dry yeast for 10 of them. The 'challenge' for dry yeast is that in comparison to liquid yeast there is a limited selection of strains. I still need to brew with liquid yeast for this reason.

Maybe someday the number of dry yeast strains will be equivalent to those from the liquid yeast vendors?

Cheers!

 

Yes.

We can hope. That would be really awesome.

 

Although I don't have a scholarly source for the information, I've heard it said many times over the years that many, maybe most, yeast strains don't survive the drying process well enough.

 

I have heard the same, and I believe it. Even with the strains currently available which many people love.... I'm finding I don't love about half of them enough to ever use them again. The bad ones turn out yeasty, tart, bready, or just plain not very good, unlike most liquid yeasts. But, we digress.

 

That seems like a really bad failure rate. You are either really unlucky, or there is some sort of wider issue, as you suggest. Are your LHBS and Wyeast aware of the issue? If so, I'm curious what they said.

Has anyone else had a string of duds like this? I see DMTaylor said he's had bad White Labs experiences lately. The pandemic has spread to liquid yeast?

 

I had a 'discussion' with the LHBS folks which did not go all that well. The dude basically shrugged his shoulders and said something like that doesn't happen often. Based upon his uncaring attitude I asked to speak to the LHBS owner but he sharply replied "He's not here". I furthered the discussion to say there is an issue with Wyeast since I had three duds in 2020 and that he should make sure that the owner and other employees of the store should be made aware of this situation but he just gave me a look of "why don't you just leave the store". His look worked because I did exactly that, I left the store.

Cheers!

 

I hope you are patronizing someplace else these days or at least have had a chance to speak with a manager or an owner, because now you have two complaints. That is some seriously bad customer service, on top of the yeast problem. It sounds like the experience is with one store, so I'm not ready to isolate Wyeast as the source of the problem. Regardless, I wish you better better brewing in 2021!