Culturing yeast from bottles

Any of you guys ever done this to clone a commercial brew? How about to reculture your own yeast from one of your homebrews? What are the benefits or drawbacks to doing this?

Thanks,
Al

People do it from commercial beers a lot. It is easy, I believe there is a section in How to Brew on the steps. I wouldn't do it from a home brew because those are the oldest, least floculative yeast. In commercial beers it is very possible that they filter then add a small amount of fresh yeast back. Be careful though many German hefeweizens and Belgians filter their ale yeasts and then add a more stable lager yeast for bottling. These yeast won't give you the original flavor if used.

http://byo.com/departments/1361.html
http://www.nada.kth.se/~alun/Beer/Bottle-Yeasts/
http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter6-7.html

Beerrific said:

People do it from commercial beers a lot. It is easy, I believe there is a section in How to Brew on the steps. I wouldn't do it from a home brew because those are the oldest, least floculative yeast.
http://byo.com/departments/1361.html
http://www.nada.kth.se/~alun/Beer/Bottle-Yeasts/
http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter6-7.html

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Thanks for the reply.

Why is there a difference between reculturing from a commercial brew and from one of your homebrews? Would'nt both be more likely to select the less flocculant yeasts of the strain?

Al

GIusedtoBe said:

Thanks for the reply.

Why is there a difference between reculturing from a commercial brew and from one of your homebrews? Would'nt both be more likely to select the less flocculant yeasts of the strain?

Al

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Not if the brewery filters out the yeast, trashes those and the adds fresh cultures.

Plus, most of the stuff in your bottles you can get fairly cheap ($6/vial) and it might not be worth the risk of funky yeast or contamination, but the stuff in commercial beers may be harder to come by. Not to say you can't do it...

I've cultured yeast back from homebrew without a problem. I forgot to save/wash my very first batch (WLP001), and collected about 6 bottles' worth of yeast. I then began a starter on a very small scale (5 ml, since very few yeast) and worked it up over the course of a week. At about day 5, I had krausen in the now quart starter, which I took to be the sign of active, healthy yeast.

I also did this with Bell's Oberon, which keeps the same yeast from fermentation to bottle. My American Wheat has been fermenting actively with this for about 10 days now.

Beerrific said:

Plus, most of the stuff in your bottles you can get fairly cheap ($6/vial) and it might not be worth the risk of funky yeast or contamination, but the stuff in commercial beers may be harder to come by. Not to say you can't do it...

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I guess I'm just getting cheap. I've got three strains of yeast here in one form or another and my local HBS has a very limited selection. It's been near 100 degrees here lately and i really don't want to risk ordering more yeast by mail right now.

BTW have you ever re-cultured Westmalle or Sierra Nevada? Clone Brews uses these as examples of beers that you can do this with.

Thanks,
Al

I just baked a loaf of bread from cultured homebrew yeast. Started with the dregs of 2 bottles of witbier (T-58) mixed with 10oz water, 5oz flour, and a good squirt of honey. Mixed in bowl, left sitting open on top of the fridge. Added the dregs of a porter (WLP001) the next day, then the dregs of a ESB (S-04). Stirred it up 2-3 times a day, adding a good pinch of sugar each time I stirred. Added 13 oz more flour, salt, and baked it on the BBQ for dinner tonight. Came out great - a little different flavor than regular homemade bread, but not too different, but didn't sour liked I hoped. I have decided that all my bottle dregs will go to feeding a bread starter, and hopefully I can get it to funkify or sour. The proportions were from Alton Brown on Good Eats, but I kept mine out of the fridge to keep the ale yeast happy (he used regular bread yeast)

you can culture pacman from shakespere stout. did it with no problems.

Intriguing...but I'm guessing this is not feasable with bottles that have been filled from a keg?

MAybe I ought to use the sludge at the bottom of my keg. There's always a fair amount.

Can you culture from flying dog? I brewed with that yeast. ONCE. (now i'm kicking myself) I diddn't like it at first. It grew on me, ALOT! Now I want to brew with it again and I can't get it anymore!!! AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!! So I have 2 options. 1. culture from one of my bottles. 2. If possible, culture it from one of theirs.

I read in Papazian's book that yeast adapt to their enviornments in cluding size of batch so a 10,000 gal. yeast won't behave the same in a 5 gal. batch. This leads me to think that if we do this with say the oberon yeast (which I am going to), and split generations off the initial batch, it should get closer and closer to the Bells version.

Right???
Maybe???

libs said:

I read in Papazian's book that yeast adapt to their enviornments in cluding size of batch so a 10,000 gal. yeast won't behave the same in a 5 gal. batch. This leads me to think that if we do this with say the oberon yeast (which I am going to), and split generations off the initial batch, it should get closer and closer to the Bells version.

Right???
Maybe???

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I'll let you know how my Wheat tastes in about 4 weeks

And to a poster above, I don't think you can culture Flying Dog yeast. They do release their commercial strain around February, I think.

feed the yeast and they will mutiply. no more buying yeast instead get a shakespeare stout drink the beer and harvest the yeast. it is an awesome concept. i have heard that a lot of hefe's have different yeast in the bottle, we will see soon. anyone know of a good lager yeast to harvest? that is about all the yeast a brewer could need.