Any substitute for DME to harvest commercial yeast?

So I just opened this bottle of Sam Adams WhiteWater IPA and noticed that not all the yeast was filtered out. After trying a sip, and really enjoying it, I was wondering if I could harvest this yeast since our next brew will be an IPA and thought this yeast would be awesome for it. But since its about 8pm on a saturday before the Super Bowl (GO PATS!!) and I don't have any DME, I was wondering how i would be able to harvest this yeast? This would be my 1st time harvesting and don't really know exactly how it would work, or how to make a wort without any extract at all to add to the yeast. Any input would be helpful!

How about some sugar?

just regular sugar i would add to my coffee? also would you know approx. what gravity i should aim for or what volume of wort for the yeast starter?

First, don't harvest it from the bottle you drank from, you just introduced the bugs from your mouth to that bottle. Secondly, just place another bottle into the fridge and let sit until you do have some DME.

I would hesitate to use plain sugar since although the yeast do ferment it, they become adjusted to the fermentation of simple sugars. And since you are working with a small population of yeast initially, the resultant population of yeast you harvest may accumulate mutations that make the yeast good at fermenting table sugar but crappy at fermenting the more complex sugars of wort. So I'd wait until I had DME to start harvesting.

postal_penguin said:

First, don't harvest it from the bottle you drank from, you just introduced the bugs from your mouth to that bottle. Secondly, just place another bottle into the fridge and let sit until you do have some DME.

I would hesitate to use plain sugar since although the yeast do ferment it, they become adjusted to the fermentation of simple sugars. And since you are working with a small population of yeast initially, the resultant population of yeast you harvest may accumulate mutations that make the yeast good at fermenting table sugar but crappy at fermenting the more complex sugars of wort. So I'd wait until I had DME to start harvesting.

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this^ x 10! as you open and pour each bottle, save the dregs at the bottom. recap with a sanitized cap and store in the fridge. save a few this way. when you're ready, start them off in a small = or < 250ml of low gravity (~1.02) wort. step it up slowly til you have the appropriate size starter for your batch.

Revvy said:

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I've been looking for this, but I can't seem to find it locally.. I've heard a lot about it. Do you use it right out of the bottle, or does it have to be boiled? What is the gravity right out of the bottle?

Refrigerate a new bottle; this will help the yeast drop to the bottom, and mofe importantly, make the beer taste better. Pour about 10 oz of beer into a glass and enjoy. Add 8oz water and a little less than 1 oz sugar to bottle and swirl vigourously, then cover with foil or saran wrap. Add another 1/2 oz of sugar once or twice a day and you have yourself a starter.

Eating table sugar will cause your yeast to stop producing enzymes that digest maltose. When you add your yeast to wort and maltose is all they have to eat, they'll start making maltose again. This may cause a slight lag in your initial fermentation. If you want to avoid this lag, add malt extract when your starter is just about as large as you want. DME's real advantage over table sugar is that it's a complete food source, not just calories. Just add a little boiled flour to your starter and you'll be fine.

Don't worry about mutations unless you have a leaky nuclear reactor in your house. Your bottle of beer probably has over a billion cells in it; even if mutations occur, they would have to offer an enormous advantage in evolutionary fitness to dominate your culture in four days. If 90% of your culture couldn't digest maltose, it would die of starvation in your wort and the other 10% would quickly multiply.

note to self

kingwood-kid said:

Don't worry about mutations unless you have a leaky nuclear reactor in your house. Your bottle of beer probably has over a billion cells in it; even if mutations occur, they would have to offer an enormous advantage in evolutionary fitness to dominate your culture in four days. If 90% of your culture couldn't digest maltose, it would die of starvation in your wort and the other 10% would quickly multiply.

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Population bottleneck

If 90% of the culture loses the ability to ferment beer, you have now harvested a dramatically different population of yeast than Sam Adams is using in their beers which defeats the purpose of harvesting from the bottle. To harvest yeast from a bottle you have to do successive step wise increases in cell number which requires the yeast to multiply many, many times which in and of its own causes genetic drift. By losing 90% of the population you speed that drift up significantly. I am not saying its guaranteed you get a different yeast but why risk it when your goal is to replicate what Sam Adams is using?

postal_penguin said:

..... I would hesitate to use plain sugar since although the yeast do ferment it, they become adjusted to the fermentation of simple sugars. And since you are working with a small population of yeast initially, the resultant population of yeast you harvest may accumulate mutations that make the yeast good at fermenting table sugar but crappy at fermenting the more complex sugars of wort. So I'd wait until I had DME to start harvesting.

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I would love to see the authority you base this opinion on. I'll go and dig out the most recent scientific paper I read on this and it clearly doesn't support your assertion that yeast eating simple sugars other than maltose are damaged in any way. Wort is NOT 100% maltose. Generally, wort contains 59% maltose, 27% sucrose and fructose and 14% glucose. The presence of glucose and other sugars, excluding maltose, simply turn off certain genes that produce maltase the enzyme that splits maltose into its usable components of glucose. Once the levels of sugars other than maltose are metabolized by the yeast cells and drop to lower levels the gene(s) that produce maltase are turned on allowing maltose to be metabolized.

Here's the scientific paper I am referring to... http://aem.asm.org/content/62/12/4441.full.pdf

Here is a recent thread where this issue was hashed out... https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/yeast-metabolism-starters-condition-yeast-environment-wort-175473/

http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/Yeast_Life_Cycle.pdf

I base that opinion on my microbiology degree and lots of concern with genetic drift in my lab work. If you grow a simple organism like bacteria or yeast on one substrate for long enough they will eventually adapt and shut off the genes for metabolizing other substrates. This can happen by methylation of the genes, mutational inactivation or elimination of the sensory receptors that sense the nutrient among others. They are not "damaged" by utilizing sugar but there is no selection pressure for the genes that utilize more complex sugars to remain active. Consequently, if by some random chance during DNA replication an error is introduced into the maltose pathway that inactivates it, it will be propagated along because there is no selection against it. This is a common method for attenuating pathogens, passage them enough times in a foreign environment and they will no longer be pathogenic in the human host.

So if your fundamental goal is to harvest the yeast Sam Adam's uses to ferment its beers, why would you want to remove the selection pressures that would in turn lead to increased genetic drift? If by random chance you introduce a mutational inactivation of the maltose pathway and now a significant portion of your yeast are unable to utilize maltose, the remaining yeast are now an even smaller population that is further removed from what Sam Adams uses. So again, why would you do this if your goal is to harvest as close to the yeast strain Sam Adams uses? My plan would be to replicate the fermentation conditions as much as possible so the yeast have all the selective pressures I can give it so that its fermentation profile drifts as little as possible. But if you just want to harvest yeast that ferment beer, well then there is no problem with just using table sugar.

In a simple yeast starter you have a different problem since using simple sugar will result in a longer lag phase once in the wort. In harvesting yeast you need to have your small number of yeast divide many times before you have sufficient numbers to either use or freeze down. These many rounds of replication introduce the problems of genetic drift on their own and by removing the selection pressure of maltose utilization you are only speeding this genetic drift. I am not saying its a guaranteed problem but its one to consider when the original poster is in no rush to harvest the yeast and can wait for DME.

postal_penguin said:

I base that opinion on my microbiology degree ....

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I hold a biology degree as well with an emphasis in micro and cell biology. The published paper I reference is what I base my opinion on and not my degree. Read the paper cited.

We are talking past each other.

I did read the paper cited and it doesn't address the problems of genetic drift which is why I do not recommend using simple table sugar to propagate the yeast. Its simply elucidating the methods of metabolism control in yeast not addressing whether genetic drift will occur. I can post papers about the lac operon in E. coli if you want and they would only be marginally less relevant to my objection to using table sugar. Genetic drift, bottlenecking and founder effects are real and well studied.

Removing a selection pressure only increases the likelihood you will get a completely different strain out of your harvest. If 10% of the population in that bottle have a mutation that makes them grow faster on table sugar they will dominate each successive generation and after the necessary rounds of propagation needed for harvest, you will end up with nothing close to what Sam Adam's uses. Sure the yeast will likely still maintain the ability to ferment beer but that is not the goal of harvesting yeast. The goal is to get the same yeast not just any yeast.

So again I will ask you, if your goal is to harvest as genetically close of a strain to the Sam Adams strain why would you propagate them in a different environment than what they are utilized for? If I was looking to harvest a strain of yeast that I really liked for my beers I wouldn't go propagate them in apple cider, I'd keep them in beer.

I am fully aware that yeast have the ability to utilize both simple and more complex sugars and that upon exhaustion of one they can switch to another. That is not my point of contention so papers on how yeast control their metabolism are borderline irrelevant.

Founder effect

Population bottleneck

postal_penguin said:

Population bottleneck

If 90% of the culture loses the ability to ferment beer, you have now harvested a dramatically different population of yeast than Sam Adams is using in their beers which defeats the purpose of harvesting from the bottle. To harvest yeast from a bottle you have to do successive step wise increases in cell number which requires the yeast to multiply many, many times which in and of its own causes genetic drift. By losing 90% of the population you speed that drift up significantly. I am not saying its guaranteed you get a different yeast but why risk it when your goal is to replicate what Sam Adams is using?

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i have to say i agree with the penguin on this. now, i don't have any expertise in biology, my degree is in music theory (AP bio in HS is where my biology knowledge maxed out), but i have brewed a lot of beer, and have a lot of experience with yeast. everything i understand about culturing yeast from a bottle involves a very slow, gradual step up of the starter to ensure a healthy population of the yeast you're culturing. i've also alway heard not to use simple sugar in a yeast starter because you want the new yeast to be well prepared for the maltose and other more complex sugars it will encounter in beer wort. i've never tried a simple sugar starter for this reason, so i can't say i've seen it cause an issue personally. maybe i'll have to do a split bath experiment to see what the differences are in a beer when fermented with a starter made from simple sugars.
i'm not saying you're wrong Mucho, you obviously know a lot more about this subject than i do, but i do understand the practical application of this in brewing and it think it makes a lot of sense. Gremlyn's thread is very interesting, i read it a few weeks back while discussing this topic on another thread. i understand that it's debatable whether or not a simple sugar starter negatively impacts the yeast's ability to go after complex sugars down the road, but i think it's one of those things, for me at least, that if there's a proven way to do something, and you have the ability to do it that way, why try something different that may, or may not, negatively impact the yeast. personally, until i hear or see something that says it's better to use simple sugar for a yeast starter in leu of a wort based starter, the topic is moot. just my opinion, but why not just use DME to make a starter? it's proven and there's no question about whether or not the yeast will be healthy or not.

Good article on trait variation in yeast and its susceptibility to bottleneck events.

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002111#pgen.1002111.s007

Revvy said:

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Stauffbier said:

I've been looking for this, but I can't seem to find it locally.. I've heard a lot about it. Do you use it right out of the bottle, or does it have to be boiled? What is the gravity right out of the bottle?

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I'd like to know more about this as well.

<EDIT> - Wikipedia says it basically nothing more than carbonated wort. Very interesting.

postal_penguin said:

.... I would hesitate to use plain sugar since although the yeast do ferment it, they become adjusted to the fermentation of simple sugars. And since you are working with a small population of yeast initially, the resultant population of yeast you harvest may accumulate mutations that make the yeast good at fermenting table sugar but crappy at fermenting the more complex sugars of wort. So I'd wait until I had DME to start harvesting.

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I originally asked to see your authority on this assertion. You have given me nothing, but your speculative opinion. You can chase all the rabbits you want on genetics, but I am interested in any published scientific paper that supports the assertion that yeast eating table sugar become crappy at fermenting other sugars especially maltose. That's all I asked to see.

I save mash runnings and freeze it in small batches to use for making starters. Simple and cheaper than using DME.

Forgive me if I missed this while reading this thread, but who knows what yeast Sam Adams uses to bottle this Whitewater IPA with? Why collect some strain that could be used just as a cheap bottle conditioning yeast if it is not for sure the strain they fermented with?

I'd be sure of that before wasting my time if it was indeed just some cheap bottling strain.

MuchoGusto said:

supports the assertion that yeast eating table sugar become crappy at fermenting other sugars especially maltose. That's all I asked to see.

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That is not my objection to using table sugar so I am not asserting that.

Straw man logical fallacy

Read the damn paper I posted. "Remarkably, all but one of the West African population traits represented severe reproductive deficiencies, including extremely poor utilization of galactose and hypersensitivity to high temperatures. This suggests extensive genome degeneration following relaxation of ancestral selective pressures. "

Wow look at that, if the yeast don't grow on galactose they lose the ability to use it. This effect is even further amplified by bottlenecking and founders effects. Its fundamental genetics so I don't need to post papers about it. If there is no selective pressure, traits drift. In the presence of selective pressures, organisms adapt. This has been well studied over and over again. Here is one with E. coli "However, although this mutation increased fitness under these conditions, it also increased the bacteria's sensitivity to osmotic stress and decreased their ability to survive long periods in stationary phase cultures, so the phenotype of this adaptation depends on the environment of the cells."

So answer me MuchoGusto, if your goal was to harvest genetically similar yeast why would you remove nearly all selective pressures for absolutely no benefit? Again if a small subset of the population harbor an advantageous mutation that allows them to grow faster in sugar water you have now just harvested a vastly different strain than what Sam Adams is using.

Anyways I am done discussing this, its obvious you aren't even reading what I am saying.

Genetic drift certainly is real, but if it occurred as rapidly as my facetious doomsday scenario suggested while making a starter, it would just as easily drift back when put into wort. Your nightmare yeast would have to not only metabolize table sugar orders of magnitude better than its cousins, but would also have to lose the ability to metabolize maltose. Even if both of these mutations occurred simultaneously (roughly akin to your getting struck by lightning while cashing in the winning powerball ticket), it would take a very small surviving maltose-eating population to quickly dominate the wort.

kingwood-kid said:

Even if both of these mutations occurred simultaneously (roughly akin to your getting struck by lightning while cashing in the winning powerball ticket), it would take a very small surviving maltose-eating population to quickly dominate the wort.

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not to be argumentative, but wouldn't that 'very small, surviving' population that was prepared to convert maltose (or other complex sugar chains) constitute as an under pitch of sorts? after all, the whole point of making a starter is to ensure appropriate pitch rates.

Irrenarzt said:

Forgive me if I missed this while reading this thread, but who knows what yeast Sam Adams uses to bottle this Whitewater IPA with? Why collect some strain that could be used just as a cheap bottle conditioning yeast if it is not for sure the strain they fermented with?

I'd be sure of that before wasting my time if it was indeed just some cheap bottling strain.

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That's a good point i didn't even think of. The yeast in the bottle may not be the yeast responsible for the fermentation, but just added for bottling like you mentioned.

I'm a pretty new brewer and i think i got a bit too excited when i saw the yeast on the bottom and really enjoyed the beer.

And to answer the question about making the wort, my local food coop sells something called "Barley Syrup" in 12oz jars. It is essentially LME. It is probably also available in a supermarket.

NordeastBrewer77 said:

not to be argumentative, but wouldn't that 'very small, surviving' population that was prepared to convert maltose (or other complex sugar chains) constitute as an under pitch of sorts? after all, the whole point of making a starter is to ensure appropriate pitch rates.

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Yes, it would. However, the odds of that happening are infinitesimal, and even if it did happen, the beer would still ferment out, a few yeasty off-flavors notwithstanding. Since the beer in question is made with 3 pale malts, wheat, 5 hops, orange peel, coriander and apricots, underpitching a neutral yeast like wlp008 wouldn't really be noticeable anyway. If you tried to clone a beer that complex on a homebrew setup, you'd have so many points of divergence that it might not matter if you closed your eyes and randomly grabbed a yeast out of your LHBS' fridge.

KuzinChaos said:

That's a good point i didn't even think of. The yeast in the bottle may not be the yeast responsible for the fermentation, but just added for bottling like you mentioned.

I'm a pretty new brewer and i think i got a bit too excited when i saw the yeast on the bottom and really enjoyed the beer.

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i would guess it's not the fermentation strain. i haven't had any Boston Beer Co beers in a long time, but i remember them being filtered and more recently seemed pasteurized, so i doubt their'd be any living memory of the yeast that was in the fermenter.

kingwood-kid said:

it would take a very small surviving maltose-eating population to quickly dominate the wort.

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EXACTLY. And that small population is going to be genetically distinct from the parent population(aka what Sam Adams put in the bottle).

I am not saying you will not be able to make beer with it, but if you want the strain that Sam Adams uses, why put the yeast through bottlenecking events or select for strains that grow best in sugar water rather than wort. Again, I am arguing that for the best genetic similarity between your harvested strain that you store and the one Sam Adams put in the bottle, forcing the yeast through bottleneck events or placing them under different selection pressures is stupid. And its all for absolutely no benefit.

Further we are not making a starter, we are stepwise increasing the population of yeast which means many rounds of division, much more than a starter. So even if a mutant has a 20% increase in doubling time it will mean that those variants will quickly dominate the culture after successive rounds of sugar water growth, no "orders of magnitude" better needed. Play with this calculator: http://www.analyzemath.com/solvers_calculators/exponential_growth_solver.html You'll see that even a 10% increase in the rate will cause a dramatic change in the population.

So again, if you want a genetically representative population of what Sam Adams uses then putting your yeast in a selection environment different than wort is the wrong approach. You will select variants that grow better in sugar water(notice how I didn't say they will ONLY ferment sugar water) rather than the ones that grow in wort.

KuzinChaos said:

That's a good point i didn't even think of. The yeast in the bottle may not be the yeast responsible for the fermentation, but just added for bottling like you mentioned.

I'm a pretty new brewer and i think i got a bit too excited when i saw the yeast on the bottom and really enjoyed the beer.

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A lot of companies do not bottle with the yeast they ferment with. Most breweries filter or centrifuge their beer and therefore have to add more yeast to achieve carbonation during bottle conditioning. I would be skeptical, especially of a larger company like Sam Adams, as it is likely cheaper to use a different strain for bottling. Big companies are more concerned with the bottom line than a homebrewer ever will be.

postal_penguin said:

So again, if you want a genetically representative population of what Sam Adams uses then putting your yeast in a selection environment different than wort is the wrong approach. You will select variants that grow better in sugar water(notice how I didn't say they will ONLY ferment sugar water) rather than the ones that grow in wort.

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If the selection environment is so critical, why are starter gravities always recommended to be 1/2 to 1/4 of wort gravities? Why are starter temps supposed to be 10-25 degrees higher than ferment temps?

kingwood-kid said:

If the selection environment is so critical, why are starter gravities always recommended to be 1/2 to 1/4 of wort gravities? Why are starter temps supposed to be 10-25 degrees higher than ferment temps?

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How many times do I have to say we are not making a starter when harvesting yeast? Are you even reading my posts? A starter is what 1 round of division to pitching numbers? Harvesting yeast can take 10 times that many generations to get to pitching numbers, a rough calculation gives me 16 generations to get from 1 million to 100 billion. Anyways, I am tired of repeating myself so I am done discussing this with anyone anymore.

kingwood-kid said:

Don't worry about mutations unless you have a leaky nuclear reactor in your house. .

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aw damnit! I guess I'm out of luck. Anyone need a stir plate and Erlenmeyer flask?

kingwood-kid said:

Refrigerate a new bottle; this will help the yeast drop to the bottom, and mofe importantly, make the beer taste better. Pour about 10 oz of beer into a glass and enjoy. Add 8oz water and a little less than 1 oz sugar to bottle and swirl vigourously, then cover with foil or saran wrap. Add another 1/2 oz of sugar once or twice a day and you have yourself a starter.

Eating table sugar will cause your yeast to stop producing enzymes that digest maltose. When you add your yeast to wort and maltose is all they have to eat, they'll start making maltose again. This may cause a slight lag in your initial fermentation. If you want to avoid this lag, add malt extract when your starter is just about as large as you want. DME's real advantage over table sugar is that it's a complete food source, not just calories. Just add a little boiled flour to your starter and you'll be fine.

Don't worry about mutations unless you have a leaky nuclear reactor in your house. Your bottle of beer probably has over a billion cells in it; even if mutations occur, they would have to offer an enormous advantage in evolutionary fitness to dominate your culture in four days. If 90% of your culture couldn't digest maltose, it would die of starvation in your wort and the other 10% would quickly multiply.

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Is this also a good explanation of why YPDA media might not be optimal for culturing/selecting yeast for brewing? I.E. using too much dextrose:maltose.

postal_penguin said:

We are talking past each other.

I did read the paper cited and it doesn't address the problems of genetic drift which is why I do not recommend using simple table sugar to propagate the yeast. Its simply elucidating the methods of metabolism control in yeast not addressing whether genetic drift will occur. I can post papers about the lac operon in E. coli if you want and they would only be marginally less relevant to my objection to using table sugar. Genetic drift, bottlenecking and founder effects are real and well studied.

Removing a selection pressure only increases the likelihood you will get a completely different strain out of your harvest. If 10% of the population in that bottle have a mutation that makes them grow faster on table sugar they will dominate each successive generation and after the necessary rounds of propagation needed for harvest, you will end up with nothing close to what Sam Adam's uses. Sure the yeast will likely still maintain the ability to ferment beer but that is not the goal of harvesting yeast. The goal is to get the same yeast not just any yeast.

So again I will ask you, if your goal is to harvest as genetically close of a strain to the Sam Adams strain why would you propagate them in a different environment than what they are utilized for? If I was looking to harvest a strain of yeast that I really liked for my beers I wouldn't go propagate them in apple cider, I'd keep them in beer.

I am fully aware that yeast have the ability to utilize both simple and more complex sugars and that upon exhaustion of one they can switch to another. That is not my point of contention so papers on how yeast control their metabolism are borderline irrelevant.

Founder effect

Population bottleneck

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heh heh, add epigenetic regulation if you really want to get controversial. I tend to agree with you. I work on directed evolution in yeast and we are always seeing gene expression effects that are not always explained by mutation or loss of function.