Pacman harvest

I harvested Pacman from a Rogue bottle; drank the beer, capped the bottle with sanitized new cap, and refrigerated for 2 weeks. I then made a 1L starter from the yeast in the Rogue bottle. I decanted the beer off the top, pitched the yeast on 11.28 @ 70*. I am nervous the yeast was dead, however, there was a smaller amount of yeast in the flask. I am waiting three days, and if nothing happens in my airlock, can I repitch 05 on top? Slainte!

If you have a larger a amount of yeast now then you did out of the bottle, your yeast should be fine. I'd try stepping up your starter before anything else.

In the future you could make up a tiny bit of wort and culture it in the bottle first. Then if you can confirm viability, step it up until you have enough for a good culture.

arch1tect said:

In the future you could make up a tiny bit of wort and culture it in the bottle first. Then if you can confirm viability, step it up until you have enough for a good culture.

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+1

In my experience harvesting pacman, I had to step it up several times before having enough viable yeast to pitch into my beer. I started by using Malta (a nasty tasting unfermented beer drink, but a wonderful product to use for harvesting commercial yeast strains) to grow the first bit over a few days, then decanting the liquid off the yeast and doing it again. Finally I made a DME wort starter and grew the last bit.

By the time I was ready to brew I had over an inch of yeast in my jar.

Basically if the sediment is growing, you have viable yeast. You just need to coerce it to breed.

For your situation, it may have been too small amount of yeast to pitch. I believe (correct me if I am wrong), that it could still ferment properly, but its going to take sometime for the yeast to multiply enough to be able to tackle the massive amount of sugar available. I have read that under pitching can lead to stressed out yeast and off flavours, but I have no first hand experience with that/

And about airlocks; I don't trust them. Mine almost never bubble but I can see physical signs of fermentation (carbonation appearing, krausen, hydrometer readings). I would take a reading and see if the SG has dropped any.

Thanks guys. I will wait until tomorrow (72hrs) before I make my move. Can I repitch 05 on top or will that cause off flavors?

I don't think it would cause off or bad flavours, the 05 should just out compete the pacman. If I were in your shoes, I would repitch. Pacman and 05 don't really drive the style as much as the other ingredients, so I would not worry. I would rather see a healthy fermentation then anything else at this point.

Bradinator said:

I don't think it would cause off or bad flavours, the 05 should just out compete the pacman. If I were in your shoes, I would repitch. Pacman and 05 don't really drive the style as much as the other ingredients, so I would not worry. I would rather see a healthy fermentation then anything else at this point.

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I will be repitching again tonight. Thanks Brad.

I did not pitch; at 11:30 the airlock started. Waiting....

So its starting on its own? The pacman yeast has probably multiplied enough to start working away on the sugars enough to produce visible fermentation signs.

Let us know how it turns out in the end. I would be interested in hearing your experience with such a small starter and whether or not it stressed the yeast out enough to affect flavour.

While I see this as an interesting experiment and I bottle-culture/plate/slant lots of different beers, I always question the logic of doing so when a perfectly good, clean culture of the yeast can be obtained from a commercial source (Wyeast in this case). WY1764 is a great product and well on its way to becoming my 'house' strain (later generations of course --I want it to be mine, not Rogue's). I'm really not being a smart ass, I'm just making sure you know the yeast does exist in a more viable, pure form.

thanks for the feedback, Brad. I will post back in a few weeks.

Well the day after my last post the top almost blew off. Quick goat thinking, I rigged a blowoff tube in time. It rocked for just under 36 hours. Such a small starter did all that. It smells wonderful. Thanks for the help guys.