I Froze My Yeast

Nosybear

Nosybear

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Making my Mexican Dunkel, the LHBS was out of Mexican Lager yeast. So I picked up a packet of Imperial's "Urkel" (I suppose "Urquell" was trademarned) yeast, put it in the bottom of my lagering fridge and forgot about it until I was ready to brew. Well, I keep my lagering fridge pretty cold.... Didn't make a starter so, bottom line, the yeast froze. I thawed it out and pitched it about 36 hours ago. No activity.

My question: Have any of you had experience with frozen yeast? LHBS is doing curbside delivery, I could go pick up two packets of Saflager so that's a fix, just don't want to drive over there if I don't have to. So, any of you had any similar experience and how did it come out?
 
Sorry bud, I have not
 
Nosybear said:
Not yet. Will take a gravity reading this evening and see if anything is happening.
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Was it an exbeeriment of brulosophys where they tested frozen yeast? You'd know the process of freezing yeast more than me but im sure some cells survived
 
The approach I was looking at for freezing some home captured yeast I have was to mix in some glycerin to help limit the yeast cell walls rupturing when they're frozen. So I'm guessing that a very high percentage of your cells have ruptured. Not sure if any survive, but iif they do I expect you're going to have a very long lag phase.
 
What Mark said, you're going to have very little viability from a frozen culture, the vast majority of cells have been punctured by ice crystals and are now dead. Absolutely need to try a small starter (1.020, 200mL) to revive the minimal viable cells next time, then step it up from there.

Or use other yeast if you have it on hand.
 
I've never tried with unintentionally frozen yeast.
 
After 48 hours, no change whatsoever in gravity. I had a sachet of US-05 so pitched it this evening, fermenting at 65 degrees F (18 degrees C). It won't be exactly what I wanted but, as long as no acetobacter has taken hold, it should be a good beer.
 
Bummer man, sorry to hear that. Never froze a beer before, but found some interesting stuff online below.

i watched an episode of "The Homebrew Challenge" a while back where Martin froze his entire fermenter full of beer. Can't remember the whole episode, but I think he simply made a new starter from the frozen yeast starter and it worked.


Also found this one where the brewer racked it over to another yeast cake.

https://homebrewacademy.com/froze-my-beer/

Let us know how it turned out.
 
Yeah I've got a bunch of dry packs I need to use and cycle in new ones for cause they've sat in the fridge forever.
 
Hawkbox said:
Yeah I've got a bunch of dry packs I need to use and cycle in new ones for cause they've sat in the fridge forever.
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Do a small starter to see if they foam up. If so, your are good to go.

Or, you could simply dump them in the boil as yeast nutrients.
 
I keep my beer yeasts and bread baking yeasts in the freezer. They are all dry yeasts though.
No problem so far
 
AGbrewer said:
Do a small starter to see if they foam up. If so, your are good to go.

Or, you could simply dump them in the boil as yeast nutrients.
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They're not that old, it just feels wasteful to not use them.
 
Update: First pull off the keg yesterday. The US-05 did a good job for me, the beer finished a bit less dry than I like it but still very good. The extra bit of chocolate malt I ran through Beverly was not an improvement but hey, I still made a better beer than I can buy in many breweries! I like it better as a lager - the original was St. Arnold's "Santo", a beer they call a dark Koelsch. But it wasn't a bad save, all in all. Kind of a slightly estery schwarzbier.
 
Score!
 
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