Bell's Yeast Strain

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crlova2 said:
Alright well can you at least tell me which Bell's beer worked best for your results and about how long it took to get them to the amount you needed and how many initial bottles you used?

Thanks
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I used 6 bottles of BTH, but I think Oberon is a better choice, lower gravity, lower IBUs....I nursed my yeast back to health pretty good with a low gravity starter and lots of O2 and nutrient.

I started with 1/2 quart of 1.030 starter wort, and stepped it up to a 2 quart starter for my BTH clone and it tastes awesome.
 
Alright thanks a lot. I can't decide whether to use BTH for the yeast or Oberon. As much as people say they use the same yeast in those beers it is still hard for me to accept it since the styles are so different. Glad to know BTH worked for your though that is insuring.
 
crlova2 said:
Alright thanks a lot. I can't decide whether to use BTH for the yeast or Oberon. As much as people say they use the same yeast in those beers it is still hard for me to accept it since the styles are so different. Glad to know BTH worked for your though that is insuring.
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Go with the Bell's Pale Ale if you have access to it locally. The yeast in my bottles of Oberon doesn't seem nearly as flocculant as the TH or Pale.

The Pale yeast should have experienced less stress since it is not as high in alcohol or IBUs.

-Scott
 
You can harvest yeast from whichever you like, pale ale is a good call, two hearted worked fine for me. No matter what beer you harvest from, the yeast are going to be stressed from sitting in alcohol, temperature changes and age. use a lower than normal gravity starter with lots of O2 and Nutrient to nurse the healthy cells up into a nice population. Worked great for me and now the Bells yeast is my #2 house strain. It will take a behometh to unseat Pacman!
 
Was in Whole Foods last night and saw THA so I had to get it since I've never tried it and have a THA-inspired ale on tap right now (made with Bell's yeast from a BPA). Wow, this stuff is really good. Not a big bitter-bomb which is fine with me. I brewed my THA-inspired ale to only ~45 IBU and mine, if anything, is slightly more bitter than the real thing. Other than that I came surprisingly close considering I had never even SEEN THA and didn't even know the color (mine is slightly lighter). I got right under 80% attenuation on it. I used a little Simcoe in addition to Centennial so I have less Centennial 'spice' and some added grapefruit, which imo isn't as good.

I really like the two batches I made with their yeast. I'm def going to harvest it again.
 
SpanishCastleAle said:
Was in Whole Foods last night and saw THA so I had to get it since I've never tried it and have a THA-inspired ale on tap right now (made with Bell's yeast from a BPA). Wow, this stuff is really good. Not a big bitter-bomb which is fine with me. I brewed my THA-inspired ale to only ~45 IBU and mine, if anything, is slightly more bitter than the real thing. Other than that I came surprisingly close considering I had never even SEEN THA and didn't even know the color (mine is slightly lighter). I got right under 80% attenuation on it. I used a little Simcoe in addition to Centennial so I have less Centennial 'spice' and some added grapefruit, which imo isn't as good.

I really like the two batches I made with their yeast. I'm def going to harvest it again.
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May I ask you how long you let the beer ferment in order to achieve the %80 attenuation? I just pitched a India Brown (OG = 1.064) on a bells yeast cake from a 1.044 OG bitter. After 4 days I am down to 1.024 and still have some krausen and the yeast is still in suspension. I overnight mashed at 151 so I am hoping to get this hog down to at least 1.015.

My previous ferments have all taken about two weeks with this yeast, while increasing temp to 75 or so once the majority of the fermentation is completed.
 
18 days but I'm sure it was at terminal gravity way before that. I did let the temp rise to room temp after vigorous fermentation subsided. I didn't record how long I kept it cool and almost never take gravity readings during fermentation so don't know when it was at terminal gravity.
 
I just brewed a Two-Hearted clone with cultured Bell's yeast. I did a split batch and after 4 days, the S-04 Krausen has fallen, and the Bell's batch has a really thick, muddy looking Krausen.

Anyone else notice a strange Krausen with the yeast? Just hope I don't have an infection.
 
elproducto said:
I just brewed a Two-Hearted clone with cultured Bell's yeast. I did a split batch and after 4 days, the S-04 Krausen has fallen, and the Bell's batch has a really thick, muddy looking Krausen.

Anyone else notice a strange Krausen with the yeast? Just hope I don't have an infection.
Click to expand...

I didn't notice a wierd krausen, but I did notice that this yeast is very fluffy and does not flocculate well.
 
elproducto said:
I just brewed a Two-Hearted clone with cultured Bell's yeast. I did a split batch and after 4 days, the S-04 Krausen has fallen, and the Bell's batch has a really thick, muddy looking Krausen.

Anyone else notice a strange Krausen with the yeast? Just hope I don't have an infection.
Click to expand...

No weird Krausens here, but tons of yeast in the head that is quite fluffy. My guess is that it just has a lot of break proteins caught up in it but I doubt its infected. As permo said it doesn't like to flocculate well but give it a good 5 day cold crash to convince it to drop out.
 
I can't believe some kind soul that works at bell's won't just tell us what the yeast strain is.
Bell's isn't a microbiology lab (thought they have one). They didn't just "invent" their own strain! Some ******* (Wyeast or Whitelabs) is maintaining it for them.
 
oldschool said:
I can't believe some kind soul that works at bell's won't just tell us what the yeast strain is.
Bell's isn't a microbiology lab (thought they have one). They didn't just "invent" their own strain! Some ******* (Wyeast or Whitelabs) is maintaining it for them.
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Not quite as simple as finding an employee to tell you. They didn't invent the strain but it sure is a mutant of some strain Larry Bell started using in the mid to early 80's. Whitelabs maintains the culture for them but I doubt even they know where it started. I have asked around and even the kind souls that work there don't explicitly know and figure that Larry Bell is the only one who really knows where it started.

Unless of course you are referring to the Brett strains they use, which you could probably run down.
 
I don't think the strain is all that special.....I actually stopped keeping it around because I can get a virtually indestinguishable BTH clone using the much more widely available WLP001. That is also the reccomendation for yeast that I got when I emailed Bells.
 
DawgBrewer said:
Has anyone actually fermented the harvested yeast out at 76 degrees? I'm interested to hear the results.
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Interested in this as well. I have an IPA fermenting with harvested Oberon, temp controlled and under 7 psi pressure at 65 degrees. Its been 10 days and one keg (fermenter) is still at around 1.030. Its still falling, but I really think this yeast needs to be up in the 70s to ferment out. The other keg is at 1.016. Im going to bump my temp controller up to 72 tonight and see what happens.
 
Dead post, but relative...I cultured 3 bottles of Bells Pale Ale and just used it in my SMaSH APA. It's been fermenting for 3 days now and is starting to show signs of slowing. After reading this thread, a few people said how slowly this yeast can work...is it worth raising the temp from 68 to 72+ to try and help it along, or does this strain attenuate just fine with time?
Thanks...I love beer brewing
 
What is a good gravity to start out at when doing a starter for for the dregs off the bottles of this stuff?? And whatever that may be what is the ratio of water to DME to get that???
 

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