Help.

[Jimberbob]

I have tried on two occasions to use use 'White labs' yeast.
English Ale yeast WLP002 and British Ale yeast WLP007.
I kept them both in my fridge before use, made up a starter bottle a day before i intended to pitch. Nothing happened! They were well within the use by date. What am i doing wrong? Does anyone have any ideas that could help me please? I had to rely on Gervin Ale yeast which works every time for me.

[steve_flack]

What was the temperature of the starter? How much malt extract did you use in how much water to make it? Did you see any bubbling or fizzing from the starter? How big was the starter? How long did you wait without seeing any action in you main wort?

[Jimberbob]

The temperature was 25 degrees celcius, i made up the starter using spraymalt and glucose powder to 1 litre, 1045 gravity. I waited two days, absolutely nothing happened.

[DRB]

I like wyeast.

[Vossy1]

I had this problem with the WLP007.

Followed the instructions meticulously...no joy

[Frothy]

Chances are that the vial was exposed to extreme temperatures during transport etc. before you bought it. You can't go far wrong culturing healthy yeast.

Frothy

[Vossy1]

Chances are that the vial was exposed to extreme temperatures during transport etc. before you bought it.

Very annoying and something we can't do much about

[Jimberbob]

Thanks for your comments, i have to admit, it is probably the fermentaion side of things that causes me the most grief. I'm just fermenting 5 gallons of White sheild using Gervin ale yeast (as my other starters failed). Even this isn't producing a big yeasty head, just a hard layer of brown stuff that has cracked open, with the cleaner head just poking through. OG 1051, it has fermented down to 1026 after three days, so i siphoned it off into another bucket, after three hours another head has started forming. The temperature is at 23 degrees. Does this sound ok to you?