making a starter from a commercial beer

hey guys
so I last night attempted to make a starter yeast culture from a bottle of Chimay (Blue). All I did was miz 1/2 cup DME with 2 cups water, boiled it for 10mins, let it cool to 70F and poured it straight in the recently opened and almost completely finished bottle of Chimay (thinking there's still yeast in the freshly opened bottle - which I could see!). I popped an airlock on and taped it up to get an airtight seal, put it away at 70F. The thing isnt bubbling at all today (12 hr later) and no sign of any foaminess in the bottle. did i do something wrong? should I leave it a little longer?
cheers....

unless you need that airlock for something else, just leave it. what's the worst thing that can happen?

-walker

Walker said:

what's the worst thing that can happen?

-walker

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they wont grow? i dont need the airlock right now....
have you done a starter in this manner before?

nope. in fact, I've never done a starter of any kind.

-walker

You won't necessarily see a lot of foam or bubbling. The main way to tell is whether or not you see a good bit of yeast settling to the bottom.

Sam75 said:

You won't necessarily see a lot of foam or bubbling. The main way to tell is whether or not you see a good bit of yeast settling to the bottom.

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aha! an experienced person! thats good news. cheers. how long does it usually take to build up a good biomass?

I've never done one from a commercial brew, but the basic principles should be the same as making a normal starter. If you start seeing the yeast multiply, it might be necessary to "step up" your starter by adding some more wort.

I'll be interested to hear if this works!

I've seen posts on this in the past (or inquiries) but don't recall if I've ever heard of success but like Sam said...

I think you probably could have drank most of it and then swirled it around to get the settled yeast and poured that in. This way, if it didn't work you at least got to drink it

From "Brew classic european beers at home"
1. Stand the donor bottle in a cool place and leave it undisturbed for a day or two to allow the yeast to settle in the bottom.
2. Make up a yeast starter.
3. When the starter has cooled to room temperature, carefully uncap the donor botle and decant all but the last half-inch of the contents into a glass, taking care that anyyeast sediment is left behind in the bottle.
4. Give the remaining contents of the donor bottle a good shake in order to dislodge any yeast clinging to the bottom of the bottle. Tip the entire contents dregs and all into the the yeast starter solution. Shake, fit a sterilised airlock stand in a warm place.
5. Drink contents of glass.
Some commercial beers have a very low residual yeast count and it may take severla days for signs of activity to show in the starter medium.

Try these sites:

http://www.nada.kth.se/~alun/Beer/Bottle-Yeasts/

http://www.tastings.com/beer/perishable.html

http://www.bottledbeer.co.uk/glossary.html

http://byo.com/feature/810.html

http://www.sallys-place.com/beverages/beer/vintage_beers.htm

A friend of mine recently suggested to me that I make a "yeast starter" to give a jump start to my next batch. I've seen mentions of using an existing beer in this thread, but he didn't say anything about that. He just said something about boiling water and DME (trying to get the specific gravity to around 1040), cooling it, adding a tube of liquid yeast, and then putting in a ferm lock and letting it set overnight.

What's the difference?

The boiled water and DME is the wort for the starter. To that wort you can add either a tube of liquid yeast, or if you like the yeast from a bottle of unfiltered beer.

just make sure you leave enough room for the krausen - the first two or three times i did a starter i made huge messes
now i do em up in a science flask (free from work) with a rubber stopper and a large blow-off tube into a smaller flask filled half way with water, often my airlock starts with more water in it than the yeast starter