Is it ever too early to start yeast culturing?

I'm only on my 9th batch, but, what the hell.. I already made a stir plate and I figure it should pay for itself pretty quickly versus buying White Labs at $7 a pop. I think I've got a pretty good handle on the process. I was planning on starting only from pure sources for the time being. Are there any common noob mistakes with this? Any random pointers beyond the obvious sterilization, etc.?

Let me know soon, because I'm about to buy some screw cap tubes, a rack, inoculation loops, agar, etc.

Oh, also, I've been saving my (almost empty) White Labs tubes in the fridge since late October. When I brew, I dump in the yeast and cap it immediately (cap and outside of tube was sanitized before opening of course). Should I just trash those or do you think they are ok to cultivate? Obviously there is still yeast in there. They look ok. Maybe do the petri dish thing first to make sure I don't grab any nasties?

I would look more into the "yeast washing illustrated" thread more if you hadn't already. I haven't seen anybody reuse those testtubes for storing yeast, but if you do it right, I don't see why it won't work.

Oh, I don't mean reusing the White Labs tubes themselves, per se. I just hung on to them so that I could one day cultivate what's left in there.

I like the idea of ranching because I can just store the samples and use whatever one I want instead of having to use the same yeast consecutively.

Yea I really think you are heading in the wrong direction on this. You do not need to regrow yeast from pups. Wash the yeast from the primary and you will get enough to do 5 or 6 of next batches of that particular yeast. You have to buy that first vial anyway. Besides you know that the yeast at the bottom of the fermenter after fermentation is clean and viable.

The problem I see with your path is that you really can't confirm that the only thing you cultured is the particular strain of yeast you are targeting. And you won't know until you pitch it and your beer is being sampled. But I am no biologist. So maybe I am wrong here.

On the other hand, you could culture yeast from some bottle conditioned beers. Then what you are talking about is worth it sometimes as long as you are aware that if the beer has been in the bottle for longer than six months than the yeast is at least very tired if not dead.

dontman said:

The problem I see with your path is that you really can't confirm that the only thing you cultured is the particular strain of yeast you are targeting. And you won't know until you pitch it and your beer is being sampled. But I am no biologist. So maybe I am wrong here.

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Well, that is why I was wondering about just trashing the old tubes I have. But, a fresh vial should only have the yeast that I want, right? Or if there are a few different strains in there, the petri dishes should show what the dominant strain is, right?

alpo said:

Oh, I don't mean reusing the White Labs tubes themselves, per se. I just hung on to them so that I could one day cultivate what's left in there.

I like the idea of ranching because I can just store the samples and use whatever one I want instead of having to use the same yeast consecutively.

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I don't know "ranching" yeast. But 'yeast washing' is not 'reusing the yeast cake.' I have about 16 one pint jars in my fridge with about 6 oz of slurry in them. At present I have maybe 6 different varieties of yeast available.

I'm not trying to justify something that I've already decided on, which I see people do here from time to time. I'm just asking questions for now.

dontman said:

I don't know "ranching" yeast. But 'yeast washing' is not 'reusing the yeast cake.' I have about 16 one pint jars in my fridge with about 6 oz of slurry in them. At present I have maybe 6 different varieties of yeast available.

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Ah, ok, so it sounds like maybe we are talking about basically the same thing, only you're talking about grabbing a sample from a fermented batch and I'm talking about getting a sample right from the new White Labs tube. Or am I totally barking up the wrong tree?

alpo said:

I'm not trying to justify something that I've already decided on, which I see people do here from time to time. I'm just asking questions for now.

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Nobody is trying to prevent you from doing this, it just isn't that common and normally people will start with the yeast washing since it is easier, more reliable, and documented better.

I'm not too sure how much help you will find here with growing the yeast the way you are planning, might have to look for more laboratory based forums - but do keep all of us posted so we can help other that will come along.

alpo said:

Well, that is why I was wondering about just trashing the old tubes I have. But, a fresh vial should only have the yeast that I want, right? Or if there are a few different strains in there, the petri dishes should show what the dominant strain is, right?

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I don't know about trashing the vials. I heard that if you collect 500 the President of WL will come over and brew with you.

I kept my tubes for a while. I had a bunch. I finally threw them out because the yeast I was washing would not fit in them anyway so I did not have much use for them.

I don't know about that dominant strain on the dish thing.

Oh, are you thinking that you could grab a sample of the yeast as you opened the new vial before pitching it in the beer? Yea then you get the dominant yeast strain and you can set up slants for next time if you know how. I don't so I just stick with the washing after the fact.

Yeah, that is what I was talking about, just taking the sample right out the fresh vial rather than from the beer. Inoculating slant tubes, then doing like a 3 phase starter.

Sorry, I might be using the wrong terminology or not explaining myself correctly. I only just started investigating this a couple days ago.

Something to think about also. The sheer quantity of yeast involved. With your proposed method you will be culturing from small quantities up to enough to pitch in one batch.

With washing all you do is do your beer thing as normal and at the end of primary you have enough yeast to direct pitch 5 or 6 batches.

But, again. Your method does have merit when trying to grab some yeast from a bottle of say, Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale.

I think I read somewhere that washing also increments the generation count, so you can only do it for a few generations before the strain changes too much. But, culturing does not, so it can be done indefinitely.

alpo said:

I think I read somewhere that washing also increments the generation count, so you can only do it for a few generations before the strain changes too much. But, culturing does not, so it can be done indefinitely.

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You are right that washing does count towards the generations, but most don't seem to mind because if you figure you can get three generations from washing and four samples from each wash (both modest numbers) you are getting 65 batches per tube, which most think is good enough.

Not exactly sure if culturing does not advance the generations, something to look into more carefully I guess.

That is the cool thing about this hobby, you can take each little step to so many different levels. This thread delves a little into yeast at the cellular level. Coming from a science background and being a bit of a lab rat myself, I understand the enjoyment of applying this kind of knowledge/skill to a hobby.

Thanks, I will check out the threads you mentioned. I guess $7 for 65 batches isn't bad after all.

Parker36 said:

That is the cool thing about this hobby, you can take each little step to so many different levels. This thread delves a little into yeast at the cellular level. Coming from a science background and being a bit of a lab rat myself, I understand the enjoyment of applying this kind of knowledge/skill to a hobby.

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This is exactly why I am not against the OPs idea. It is just another element of this obsession that makes it so much fun.

Alpo, As far as generations go, I don't know how many batches you are brewing but I am not brewing that many. Maybe 52 in a year. On those 52 batches I will use probably 10 different yeasts. One is the nice clean S-05 and I use that for probably 10 batches. The rest would be split among the 9 other yeasts. So I figure it is fair to rebuy my 9 different yeasts on an annual basis. That way none of my yeasts would even get to third gen in that time span.

Yeah, even perfectly inoculated samples are supposed to be trashed after a while anyway.

dontman said:

I don't know about trashing the vials. I heard that if you collect 500 the President of WL will come over and brew with you.

I kept my tubes for a while. I had a bunch. I finally threw them out because the yeast I was washing would not fit in them anyway so I did not have much use for them.

I don't know about that dominant strain on the dish thing.

Oh, are you thinking that you could grab a sample of the yeast as you opened the new vial before pitching it in the beer? Yea then you get the dominant yeast strain and you can set up slants for next time if you know how. I don't so I just stick with the washing after the fact.

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Going slightly off topic, but you don't need to save the vials to send in for yeast and other stuff. Just the labels.

If your not going to save them, peel them off and mail them to me. I'll pay postage

huh? You lost me there

alpo said:

huh? You lost me there

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If you save up a bunch of the labels you can get free stuff.

really....