Determining if washed yeast are still OK to use?

[Maegnar]

Hello,

I've had some washed yeast in my fridge for around half a year. Two different strains. Thou I'm not 100% sure, but I remember that one should be Nottingham. The other is a mystery to my memory.
The "Notti" bottle, when opened, had a lot of carbonation and smelled kinda funny, so trying to be careful, I've opted to not use them and dumped them.
The other one, on the other hand, seemed cleaner in the bottle, when opened gave out less carb and had a "dried peas" smell to them.
Now is it normal for the yeast to have dried peas smell? I've made a starter out of them for the Friday brewing, but can be considering to just go to the shop and buy a new pack of yeast, to avoid any kind of contamination from the old yeast, if I'd get such advice here.

for the info, I'm goind to brew a simple SMASH.

Thanks for any thoughts.

 

[Pie_Man]

Nottingham dry yeast is pretty cheap here. Personally, if it smells weird, I wouldn't take a chance reusing it. I am not sure dried peas is a desirable yeast smell either, although it's good you think that yeast looks clean. I guess use at your own risk.

If you are spending a lot of time and money on the ingredients, you may just want to start with fresh yeast. It would be a shame to go through an entire brew day and fermentation just to use bad yeast.

 

[duboman]

Not sure how you washed and stored but if you did it properly the yeast should be fine, all yeast kind of smell funky in their own way:

I would make a starter though and ensure it's healthy first. See http://www.mrmalty.com and select slurry to see what you need. I would then evaluate your yeast after it ferments out, it might smell completely different!

 

[Riot]

I'm gonna second the recommendation to make a starter and see how it smells afterwards. You'll have a better idea of what's going on there, and be able to confirm that the yeast survived the storage.

 

[Maegnar]

After 1.5 days in the starter, the yeast doesn't show any activity... :-/
So i'm picking a safer way of buying a new pack.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

After 1.5 days in the starter, the yeast doesn't show any activity... :-/
So i'm picking a safer way of buying a new pack.

Be sure to cleran and sanitize the starter vessel before you do the next starter. If your yeast was dead, there were likely other bugs in there, that you don't want to transfer to your next starter.