Yeast failure

[guillotine]

Hi all,

I brewed an Abbey beer last week (10l batch) using Whyeast Abbey yeast . The pack did not swell that much before pitching and was nearly 6 months old. I have had that happen before so I was not not to worried. But there was no sign of Fermentation the next day, I did mange to get some died Belgian yeast in there the day after which kicked off in a few hours, but alas the beer has a bad taste so must of got infected.

I have never had a yeast completely fail before, is this common?? The yeast was brought on line along with another which worked fine. I was wondering if I get another close to the 6 months old I should request a refund??

 

[BeerCat]

I have had packs not swell before so its a good idea to make a starter so you know you are pitching healthy yeast. . Can last a long time though. I recently used some 2 year old stuff from the fridge

 

[Zephyr259]

Sorry to hear that, 6 months is the best before for those packs. Assuming optimal storage the 100 billion cells will drop to about 25% viability in that time so even for a 10l batch that was a severe underpitch. When using liquid yeast a starter is always best practices as beercat says.

If you pitched dried yeast the next day then it's unlikely down to an infection unless you got unlucky. Have you bottled yet? How old is the batch and what was the OG/Fg. Could just need a bit more aging.