Can't Culture Westmalle Yeast

I dumped the last part of a bottle of Westmalle Dubbel into my starter flask and it just isn't doing anthing. Been a week. Anyone ever done this?

I used the standard 1 cup DME, 4 cups water. It has been on a stirplate the whole time. Even added a bit of yeast nutrients in there for good measure.

I did see the yeast at the bottom of the bottle. Maybe it wasn't viable. The beer was durn good, anyhow.

I don't think it is possible that it grew while I wasn't looking. I know the signs.

When you culture from a bottle, you need to start with a small amount of low gravity wort. I generally use about 50 ml. of 1.030 and step it up a couple times. Of course, it's always possible the yeast in the bottle wasn't viable. BTW, did you know that WY3787 is Westmalle yeast?

Westmalle is one of the toughest to bottle harvest, and damn near impossible from state-side bottles. I only had success with fresh bottles I carried back from Belgium.

Yea, I'm pretty close to declaring failure on this. I think I will give it until tomorrow morning. Then, dumpola.

Dumpola. Never started. 8 days. Still, it's an interesting experiment I will try again, with a different Belgian, this Friday.

Any recommendations? I know I can buy yeast. This is an academic exercise.

Did you ever just stop your stirplate and see what if anything flocculated down? You know check for sediment?

I have noticed that if my stirplate is going I can't really see any activity, nothing that looks like the remnents of a krauzen, no sediment, nothing. I usually after about 8 hours of spinning, just turn mine off for a few hours to see.

Revvy said:

Did you ever just stop your stirplate and see what if anything flocculated down? You know check for sediment?

I have noticed that if my stirplate is going I can't really see any activity, nothing that looks like the remnents of a krauzen, no sediment, nothing. I usually after about 8 hours of spinning, just turn mine off for a few hours to see.

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Yea, nothing. I always see a change in color (gets much lighter) with yeast growth.

BTW, like the avatar, Rev. It's my desktop now.

passedpawn said:

Yea, nothing. I always see a change in color (gets much lighter) with yeast growth.

BTW, like the avatar, Rev. It's my desktop now.

Click to expand...

LOL!

I blame Charlie for getting me into this mess.