Cooper's Ale or lager Yeast

[Norselord]

The people at my LHBS are nice, friendly, and helpful; however they can be a bit chaotic and sloppy at times.

I was interested in brewing an Australian Sparkling Ale and asked them for a yeast - they said they didn't have any, but they would take the yeast packet from one of the Cooper's kits and just sell me that.

I assumed that since i told them I wanted to make an Australian Sparkling Ale (12B), they would provide the correct yeast. So i brewed up the batch and pitched the yeast.

I set the fermentation chamber for 69F (niiiiiiiice), but after 36 hours there was no activity.

After about 48 hours a very light foam appeared, it is about 2" thick. The yeast appears to be caked on the bottom, with very fine small bubbles rising up from it. This definitely appears to be a bottom fermenting yeast.

Do you think they might have given me a lager yeast?

Pictures below show packet and cake.

I reduced fermentation temp to 65 in just in case.

If this is a lager yeast, should i turn the temp down to 54F and ride it out, do a diacytal rest and a lagering period?

 

[Norselord]

Oh ****

Well well well

Did a little more research.

Notice the little inkjetted 21013 on the yeast packet?

Read this:
http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.ie/wordpress/coopers-kit-yeast/

21013 means the yeast mas packaged ... on ... the ... 210th day of 2013...JULY 30th of 2013!!!

Those asshats sold me a yeast packet from a kit that was put together over 1,300 days ago!

I feel like I am one of those paleohistorians getting ready to brew from yeast cultured up from an ancient strain captured in amber. Or from the dregs found in an amphora of a trireme sunk in the Adriatic ocean.

WTF.

 

[bfabry]

So the yeast was old, but it still took off, what's the problem? Looks like it'll all turn out fine. However the coopers kit yeast is not the yeast they use in coopers sparkling ale.

 

[Norselord]

So the yeast was old, but it still took off, what's the problem? Looks like it'll all turn out fine. However the coopers kit yeast is not the yeast they use in coopers sparkling ale.

The yeast that they do use is?

 

[bigdaddybrew]

Coopers makes the quintessential Australian Sparkling ale and Coopers yeast makes a nice one. It is especially fruity at higher ferm temps..70s. If this isn't the official yeast I'm not sure what is. Maybe Wyeast wlp009? Which I think may be the same yeast.

 

[Norselord]

WLP009 comes from Coopers.

 

[bfabry]

wlp009 is what is used by Coopers, the dry packs of yeast they distribute with their kits are a more hardy strain intended to cope with the different extremes a kit yeast is likely to encounter, ie very hot/cold fermentation etc. At least that's what I've read over at aussiehomebrewer. I believe it because the results I've gotten from the kit yeast vs recultured coopers bottles are very different, but could be confirmation bias.