Capturing Yeast . . . will it rot?

I am in the process of capturing the yeast from a sierra nevada pale ale. After a 3 days in my mini-starter, I am seeing a band of yeast developing.

Two questions . . .

1. Inevitably, some beer is being mixed into the starter with the yeast sediment from the bottle. So far, I'm not seeing any mold, but isn't mold inevitable because some beer is being mixed into the starter?

2. I drank 4 beers and mixed those into the starter, which has been at it for 3 days. With 2 left, I am continuing the process of dumping the yeast sediment into that same starter. Do any of you foresee any problems in doing it this way?

Thanks everyone!

This is a lot of effort to get Wyeast 1056 or White Labs WLP 001. Good learning experience though.
Look up some of the excellent threads on stepping up starters and harvesting yeast from bottles.

Sounds solid to me. Each addition does increase the risk of infection, so as long as you are sanitary you should be okay. How big of a starter did you make?

You should have no mold.

The key words "bottle harvest" might get you some good hits with techniques.

I did a very small starter: 1 cup. My goal is to let it ferment out, decant and pitch it into a 1 quart starter. From what I heard, their yeast is similar to 1056, but not the same. In the end, it'll probably ferment out and taste like a 1056, but I thought it would add to the novelty of it all.

Sounds like you are right on track!

Update: I brewed up the SNPA clone and pitched in their yeast from a 2L starter. Although its slowing down now, it took off and fermented like wild. I kinda expected this, as there was evidence of blow out from that 2L starter, which btw was in a 4L jug! While it still early, so far things are looking okay.

I would be very interested in testing this yeast if you would be interested in knowing more about it. I'll check morphology and plate it to give you a good idea of how many different microorganisms you may have and can even isolate the brewers yeast. If you are interested send me a PM.

that all seems interesting but i don't know what (a) "morphology" means and (b) am afraid that i wouldn't understand the significance of the tests you would run. I'm a major amateur.

The report would just give you an idea of how much slurry to pitch for a given beer. It can vary quite a bit due to cell density and viability. It would also indicate if there were signs of some common beer spoilers such as bacteria, wild yeast, and mold.

For more information see this:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/p/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html

hiphops said:

Update: I brewed up the SNPA clone and pitched in their yeast from a 2L starter. Although its slowing down now, it took off and fermented like wild. I kinda expected this, as there was evidence of blow out from that 2L starter, which btw was in a 4L jug! While it still early, so far things are looking okay.

Click to expand...

You harvested from a SN bottle? From what I understand, they use a different bottling yeast, it's not the Chico strain (unless that was the point and I missed that).

I would be highly surprised if SNPA was bottle conditioned with anything but Chico. They've made no secret about the yeast they use and there's very little to gain by filtering it out and adding a different yeast for bottling.

Kellerweis however definitely uses a different yeast than Chico, but afaik it's still the same yeast in fermentation and bottling. I've never seen a conclusive answer as to what it is, or if a commercial varient was available so I bottle harvested and slanted that bad boy for future brews.