Frozen Yeast Starter.....aka 'why I shouldn't drink and brew'

[Gnomebrewer]

I brewed a nice Northern English Brown ale yesterday. Brew went well - hit all temps, gravity and volume spot on. So, while the wort was settling (I leave it for an hour or two to settle then run it into the fermenter to leave most of the hops/break behind) I cracked open a beer. Then another, and another (you get the picture). After a few beers, I looked at my starter of WY1028 and decided I should crash chill it and decant (my original plan was to pitch the whole 1.5L), so I stuck it in the freezer. That turned out not to be my finest decision making moment. A few hours later, in a drunken stupor, I remembered the yeast. Roughly the bottom third was frozen solid. Cursing my stupidity, I pitched the whole starter anyway, thawing the ice with some wort.

Anyway, this morning it seems to be happily fermenting at 19C with a decent looking krausen. Hopefully freezing the starter hasn't been too detrimental.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I'll update the post later with tasting notes...my concern now is that the stress caused to the yeast might result in some off flavours.

 

[OzzyBrew]

I have never frozen the yeast....but I have shocked a few ale yeast into the 48F region. It's fermenting, so maybe it's alright? Looking forward to a follow up!

 

[daksin]

Yeah, you lost some cells so you may have gotten some underpitching, but since not everything was frozen, you still had some happy healthy yeast in there to get the job started. Keep an eye on it and you should be fine.