Culturing Schneider Weiss Yeast from a bottle

I will be brewing a Schneider Weiss clone this weekend and after reading Jamil's article in BYO about it, thought it would be fun to try and culture the yeast. I have a few questions....

1) Has anyone successfully done it? (It is the primary strain that they bottle condition with)

2) How long will this likely take? I have about 6 days until I brew.

3) How does this procedure sound?
a. Chill bottle to near freezing.
b. Sanitize outside of bottle.
c. Open bottle and decant 7/8 of the beer off the sediment layer.
d. Pitch a small amount of low gravity (1.020) wort into the bottle and cover with aluminum foil.
e. Let sit for a day.
f. Pitch the whole culture into a full bottle size of mid-gravity wort (1.030).
g. Let sit for two days day.
h. Chill culture to flocculate yeast.
i. Decant beer off top of yeast layer.
j. Pitch yeast into a 1.75 quart starter of 1.040 gravity wort.
k. Ferment out as long as possible.
l. Chill starter decant and pitch yeast layer to final beer.

4) I have an air pump that I used for the starter I made this week and it worked like a champ. Should I continually aerate a bottle culture?

Any other tips? Is this too short a time? My fall back is just to use the Weihenstephaner yeast if this falls through.

Thanks

Schneider Weisse is supposedly bottled using the same yeast as fermenting.

If it's still alive it'll be a miracle unless you get it from a military base where most beers aren't export-style (pasteurized).

Give it a try...what do you have to lose?

I cultured some yeast from a bottle of Aventinius earlier this summer in much the same way as you suggest. However, it took about a week for the initial wort in the bottle to get going. I guess the amount of viable yeast in the bottle was pretty small. Maybe you'll have more success. Just be prepared in case you don't.

Paul

Be prepared to step it up many times as there is very little visable growth during the first time or two.
It would also help to use the yeast from 3-4 bottles to shorten the time needed to multiply enough

niquejim said:

Be prepared to step it up many times as there is very little visable growth during the first time or two.
It would also help to use the yeast from 3-4 bottles to shorten the time needed to multiply enough

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O.K. I need to make two cultures. I brew 10-12 gallons at a time and pitch into two separate primaries. Maybe I should pitch 3 bottles dregs into each starter? I mean, I still get to drink the beer so it is essentially free yeast [/justification] :rockin:

I think I am convinced enough to at least try it. The story about the Adventious working has me encouraged. I have my wife's camera, so hopefully I will document the whole thing.

For those in the close area, if this works would anyone be interested in a yeast share? I could probably save or wash some of this for reuse if it works well...

Search for the threads on havesting Pacman yeast from about 4-5 months ago...you'll find a ton of info on what we all did. I got a ton of pacman, from several harvests.

Boerderij Kabouter said:

O.K. I need to make two cultures. I brew 10-12 gallons at a time and pitch into two separate primaries. Maybe I should pitch 3 bottles dregs into each starter? I mean, I still get to drink the beer so it is essentially free yeast [/justification] :rockin:

I think I am convinced enough to at least try it. The story about the Adventious working has me encouraged. I have my wife's camera, so hopefully I will document the whole thing.

For those in the close area, if this works would anyone be interested in a yeast share? I could probably save or wash some of this for reuse if it works well...

Click to expand...

Yeah it works, it just doesn't appear to at the beginning because of the low starting cell count.

I'm going to be doing my Drunk owl soon so I bought 6 Unibroue beers to get that Canadian/Belgian yeast for "free" also

Here is day one:



Start with a sanitized growler. Sanitize two bottles of Schneider Weizen original.

Measure out 6 oz. pale DME, boil 1 cup water and mix in DME. Boil for 15 minutes.

While boiling pour beer into your handy weiss glass until yeast cake begins to move. Swirl yeast and empty into growler.



Looks like I got a very good amount of yeast in suspension!



After the wort is chilled, add to growler, swirl aggressively to aerate.

Here is the final after day one.



I am shaking periodically for the first day allowing the yeast to wake up. Hopefully this will work!

So today is day two!

When I woke up this morning I had about a 1/8" yeast layer, which seems a good sign to me, but I am not sure.

When I got home from work tonight, I sanitized an additional two Schneider weisses and prepared another two cups of wort. This time I used 2 oz. of pale DME for 2 cups water.


Here is the new volume:


I am constantly aerating this one with my air stone.

As a side note, check out how well Fermcap-S works!!!!

Before fermcap about 5 seconds away from a big, big mess:



Within 2 minutes, Fermcap has the situation under control and bubbling away happily:



I love this stuff!!!!

I will keep you updated int he coming days. My plan is to leave the air stone in for 48 hours (Thursday night) then chill in the fridge overnight. On Friday morning, decant beer off top of yeast cake (hopefully) and pitch to a 1.75 qt. yeast starter. Then hopefully this will be all set for my brewday Sunday.

Comments?

looking good

I woke up this morning and found a generous layer of yeast settling at the bottom of the growler!:rockin:

This is with constant aeration and a ton of bubbles crashing around in the beer.


So now I have a question:

Should I leave it go another day like this? ...or...

Should I put it in the fridge to compact the yeast layer, then decant of the beer and add a full starters worth of fresh wort?

Chris Colby of BYO has a good article about bottle propagation and he said that after the second feeding, when the yeast really takes off and starts reproducing, you should decant the beer to eliminate mutant and poorly flocculating yeast.

I am brewing Sunday morning, so my plan is to have a full started fermented to completion and decant the spent beer before pitching the cake.

I have a picture of the yeast layer as of this morning but forgot the hookup cable to upload the pics

Thanks for the help!

Have you done the second feeding yet? If you have, then I'd follow Colbys suggestions...If you haven't yet, I'd feed it again, then follow his suggestions, if you want it for sunday.

Is that article posted online???

Revvy said:

Have you done the second feeding yet? If you have, then I'd follow Colbys suggestions...If you haven't yet, I'd feed it again, then follow his suggestions, if you want it for sunday.

Is that article posted online???

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Hi Revvy,

Yes I have fed this thing twice. The first was a low gravity wort (1 cup) to wake up the yeast, and the second was a normal gravity wort (2 cups at 1.040 with another 2 bottles of Schneider yeast).

Here is the article:
BYO - Yeast Culturing from Bottles: Techniques

I think it is time to go into the fridge in that case. I will wait a little bit though, if anyone agrees or disagrees, please post.

Great article...Personally I have never chilled the culture to compact the cake before I pitched it, I usually go straight from stirplate to fermenter, either by decanting off most of the old beer, or doing a rinse ala the yeast washing primer on here.

So are you planning to compact the yeast, then on saturday make a starter with it for sunday? or are you planning just to pitched the compress cake on sunday?

Revvy said:

Great article...Personally I have never chilled the culture to compact the cake before I pitched it, I usually go straight from stirplate to fermenter, either by decanting off most of the old beer, or doing a rinse ala the yeast washing primer on here.

So are you planning to compact the yeast, then on saturday make a starter with it for sunday? or are you planning just to pitched the compress cake on sunday?

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I am planning to compact the yeast, then make a starter on Saturday. I think I will put it in the fridge when I get home from work.

Instead of putting this in the fridge, I decided to decant the current beer and pitch directly to a full out starter. I did this the morning of day four. When I got home from work, the yeasties were having a grand old orgy!!!



Looking good! The plan is to let this ferment out until night time on day 5, then put it in the fridge. Day six is brew day, I will decant the beer off the cake and pitch only the cake to the actual batch.

I also started a starter of Wyeast 3068 (Weihenstephaner) that I will be pitching to half this batch. I love yeast comparisons!

This sounds awesome. Can you post the recipe?

The recipe is posted in my sig now.

Well the starter beer from this project tasted acceptable ( this was my first starter project so I don't have a lot of reference) so I used it. This fermentation shot off like a rocket! This was bubbling away happily and Krausen was already rising after an hour and a half.

Well I had my first sample of the Schneider clone yesterday and was thoroughly saddened. It is not fully carbed and equalized yet but I had a sample just to check on it.....

yuck... some kind of a weird medicinal taste. I didn't have time to do a full diagnostic. I'll do that tonight. I don't know if it is a yeast problem, an infection, or some cleaner in the fermenter... I've not a had a bad batch yet so I don't have a lot of experience with this stuff.

The only thing I can think of that could have been problematic were the primary fermenters we used. They had been soaking in PBW for around 3 months in my BIL's basement. Mine were full of other beer so we used his. I rinsed the crap out of them with near boiling water then star san'd them, then rinsed and star san'd again. I am still worried that this has a weird madicinal band aidy flavor.

It is a good thing that all 10g aren't ruined. The 5g's I pitched Wyeast 3068 to tastes great, although not like Schneider, much more banana and sweetness from the esters. I will keep this updated.

Well I drank a bunch of the Schneider last night (like half a glass...) to try and figure out what is wrong with it. I still don't know. I also had some of the batch fermented with 3068 and although it is fine, it has a hint of the same strange medicinal taste that makes it kind of annoying to drink after a few.

This leads me to believe one of two things....

1) the primary fermenters were not rinsed well enough and had residual detergents causing the medicinal flavors.

2) This batch fermented at my BIL's house and he does not have any sort of fermentation control. It was ~70ºF in his basement while this was fermenting and with the crazy vigorous ferment I would not be surprised if the temps reached 80º. I have not had experience with high heat fermentations before but I am thinking I may just have produced a massive number of phenols. Schneider is known for its propensity to produce large numbers of phenols (hence the spicy notes) so this is where I am leaning. Although, I would think that just a hot ferment would produce a bad beer. This is undrinkable. I am guessing I have reached my first to-be-dumped batch.

I still have not ruled out infection or bum yeast collection though. Any input would be great.

Thanks,
Justin

If you have any of the yeast left do a 1gal batch with controlled temps and clean and sanitized equipment and go from there

Hi there.

Just giving this a bump. This question might go in the newbie section but I'm trying the same thing as the original poster. Shouldn't be doing so as it's only my third batch but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Have done a bit of searching for hints on this question but no luck yet so I hope you'll bear with me.

Anyway, I captured a bit of yeast from a Schneider Weisse bottle and put it into an Aventinus style recipe. What has happened since is that from 24 hours through now (day 6) it has bubbled at a near-metronomic 3bpm at 19C (about 66F). Apparently you shouldn't judge fermentation by bubbles (although I don't understand that, thought CO2 had to be expelled), but a hydrometer reading last night indicates that it might have dropped down from about 1.064 OG to 1.060. I'll be an old man before this is done.
It's definitely fermenting though, a couple of inches of krausen on top, little bubbles in the hydro sample, and no obvious signs of infection.

I've read on this site and elsewhere about stuck fermentations and slow fermentations, but this one isn't stuck. It sure is slow but most slow ferments are talking about after an initial fast spell, aren't they?

Anyway, almost to the point of bailing out and pitching in some other yeast, which I don't want to do if I can help, because it's been fun trying to use the real stuff.

So my questions are twofold - first, what's wrong with the yeast that it's definitely going, but not accelerating? Second, any point in being patient, or trying any tricks, or might I just as well stick some other yeast in?

Looking back at the process thus far, there are some reasons why things might not have gone so well - I stepped up in only 2 steps, only pitched about 600ml of starter, in both steps needed to warm up the wort to get fermentation - or at least to expedite the process after waiting a few days (in the hot water cupboard, 32C, about 88F). I actually put the heater in the room with the fermenter in the weekend, thought I might have bred a high-temp yeast, warmed the room up to 24C (75F) for a few hours, no change. Also it might be that the first wort had slightly higher gravity than it should have.
But I'm a bit perplexed that it's clearly going, but not accelerating...

Anyway, realise that this is a bit of a chaotic newbie question, but any thoughts appreciated. Why is my yeast so lazy.

Oh and if Boerderij is still about, reading this, I'd be interested to know what temps you were fermenting the yeast at.

Great site.

Cheers
Craig.

I am indeed still around. My batch was a failure due to what I believe were excessively high fermentation temps (~80ºF). Wheat yeasts are very temperature temperamental and can get bad if left to their own devices. I suggest fermenting wheat beers around 68ºF with controlled fermentation temperature.

Also, I would just still with your cultured yeast. If it is fermenting away you will be good to go. Also, so long as you have your fermenter sealed well, bubbles are a good gauge of fermentation activity. The reason some advocate again looking at bubbles is buckets tend to lose seal and many new brewers don't know how to handle the situation and freak out. If everything is normal the airlock will be a reliable source of information.

Has it been at 3bpm the entire ferment?

Hi Boerderij,

Yes, 3bpm the whole time. For the first 24 hours, nothing, since then bubbling about every 19s for the next 5 days. It hasn't gone through a period of high activity. It has actually slowed down the last day but I think that might just be because we've had a cold snap - down to about 16C.

Well it seems that my normal temp of 66F is close to what you recommend at 68F. Just as well because I don't have much ability to control the temperature.

I'll try to leave it for at least another day or two, but I'm not sure how patient I can be because at this rate it will take ages...!

Good to hear from you,
Craig.

Patience is a virtue. Especially with a small pitch amount into a large volume of high gravity wort... give it time.

Boerderij_Kabouter said:

Patience is a virtue.

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So I've heard. Well I'm busy the next few days so should be able to hold out until the weekend, as long as the bubbles keep trickling out. Plus my previous APA should be just about ready to sample now so can get into that instead.

Will see if I can give an update in a few days. Fingers crossed.

Cheers for the solidarity. Really cool labels on your link btw, I must practice my inkscape.

Craig.

Up to 90s intervals. If this yeast hasn't gone to yeasty heaven, it must be only a few yawns away from the big sleep. Think I'll have to bite the bullet this weekend.

I would test the gravity again... see where it is.

Hi Boerderij,

Yesterday (11) bubbling just about came to a dead halt, so I pulled the plug and threw some dry yeast in, which is now charging along. Did a hydro reading when putting the yeast in and it was still around 1.060 or so.

My guess is that I just need to step the yeast up more, as per the link earlier in this thread, and make sure it's firing properly at normal room temps before pitching 1.5L+ in. I'd like to try again though as it was fun this time around.

Will leave this thread for someone else to post the first success story!

Cheers,
Craig.

Boerderij_Kabouter said:

I am indeed still around. My batch was a failure due to what I believe were excessively high fermentation temps (~80ºF). Wheat yeasts are very temperature temperamental and can get bad if left to their own devices. I suggest fermenting wheat beers around 68ºF with controlled fermentation temperature.

Click to expand...

Yeah I agree with this cause I tried a Schneider Weiss last Christmas and it was all banana flavored as you experienced and it fermented around 70 to 72 (my roommates enjoyed a hot apartment unfortunately), but I'm going to give it a try here this weekend and fermenting at 60 - 64.

dbell032 said:

Yeah I agree with this cause I tried a Schneider Weiss last Christmas and it was all banana flavored as you experienced and it fermented around 70 to 72 (my roommates enjoyed a hot apartment unfortunately), but I'm going to give it a try here this weekend and fermenting at 60 - 64.

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Bump? Any news with the Schneider brew dbell032?