Homebrew4Scott
Active Member
I have seen a few threads where folks have harvested yeast from a bottle of beer. Could someone explain how this could be best accomplished?
Thanks
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Harvesting yeast from bottled beer
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SilverZero
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I think Google is your friend on this one. Or start with Palmer's info.
Jsbeckton
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Yeah, it involves being very careful with sanitation and stepping up the size of the starter. Google it but give yourself a week to build it up to a sufficient size. I did it with a bells two hearted ale and could barley see the yeast I started with.
Just curious, how long did this take to kick off? I have dregs from six bottles of bell THA in a starter right now, been about 48 hour and no signs of activity...
Jsbeckton
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caber2615 said:
I started with the dregs of just 2 bottles and had activity within 24 hours if I recall, maybe a bit more. Surprised that you haven't seen anything yet. The bottles that I has we're only 3-4 weeks old do that might have helped.
ReverseApacheMaster
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I've seen bottle harvested yeast take a day or as much as a week (old bottles with finicky strains) to show initial activity. I usually expect to see activity within 2-3 days.
RUNningonbrew
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caber2615 said:
What was your OG of your starter? It needs to be stepped up slowly.
I used the regular 1/2 cup DME to 2 cups water for my starter...then added the dregs from 6 bottles.
RUNningonbrew
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Is it on a stir plate?
Nope, intermittent stirring.
Jsbeckton
Well-Known Member
To clarify, I didn't use a stir plate, just intermittent shaking as well
kzimmer0817
Well-Known Member
I'd like to brew an Amber Ale much like Bell's Amber Ale. I think I've found a few recipes that might work.
I've read the section from Palmer's about this process, but I still have a few questions:
1. Someone suggested using the yeast from 6 bottles, though Palmer suggests harvesting from 2 or 3 bottles. I guess, if I can't drink enough beers in one sitting, I'll need to "step up".
2. Please explain the "stepping up" process. I think I know what it is. Is it simply decanting the liquid from the current starter, re-suspending the sludge, then pouring this starter into another 2 cups of starter wort as was done in the initial step? Then this process is repeated a few times?
3. Does anyone know if Bells bottle conditions with the same yeast that's used for fermentation? I've read that some brewers use a different yeast for bottle conditioning.
Edited: I continued to search a bit and found the following link referenced in another thread about yeast starters:
http://billybrew.com/stepping-up-a-yeast-starter
The stepping up chart referenced in the above link uses known starting points. IOW, you sort of know how many cells you're starting with when you prepare a starter from commercially prepared yeast. It also mentions that you don't continue to get doubling with subsequent steps. I imagine that is due to a quart of wort only being able to sustain a certain number of cells (overpopulation issue).
I'm guessing that no one knows how many cells are in a bottle of commercially prepared craft beer, so . . .
Question #4. how do you know if you have enough yeast cells to pitch if you're preparing the starter by harvesting from the commercial beer bottles? From how many bottles do you harvest, and how many step-ups do you undertake?
Thanks,
Keith
I've read the section from Palmer's about this process, but I still have a few questions:
1. Someone suggested using the yeast from 6 bottles, though Palmer suggests harvesting from 2 or 3 bottles. I guess, if I can't drink enough beers in one sitting, I'll need to "step up".
2. Please explain the "stepping up" process. I think I know what it is. Is it simply decanting the liquid from the current starter, re-suspending the sludge, then pouring this starter into another 2 cups of starter wort as was done in the initial step? Then this process is repeated a few times?
3. Does anyone know if Bells bottle conditions with the same yeast that's used for fermentation? I've read that some brewers use a different yeast for bottle conditioning.
Edited: I continued to search a bit and found the following link referenced in another thread about yeast starters:
http://billybrew.com/stepping-up-a-yeast-starter
The stepping up chart referenced in the above link uses known starting points. IOW, you sort of know how many cells you're starting with when you prepare a starter from commercially prepared yeast. It also mentions that you don't continue to get doubling with subsequent steps. I imagine that is due to a quart of wort only being able to sustain a certain number of cells (overpopulation issue).
I'm guessing that no one knows how many cells are in a bottle of commercially prepared craft beer, so . . .
Question #4. how do you know if you have enough yeast cells to pitch if you're preparing the starter by harvesting from the commercial beer bottles? From how many bottles do you harvest, and how many step-ups do you undertake?
Thanks,
Keith
Here's what I do. I've harvested Bell's yeast quite a bit, not sure if it's their fermentation strain, but it's very similar to Wy1272. First off, here's a link to a thread that will answer a lot of questions, including approx. cell count for, I believe, Bell's beers.
Here'sa link to an HBT blog entry I did on harvesting yeast from a few bottles of Bell's amber.
I have great luck doing this and have reused the harvested yeast for several generations.
smata67
Well-Known Member
Send Bell's an email and ask THEM your yeast questions. I've had success contacting craft brewers and yeast manufacturer's, 100% success in fact. Matt Thrall of Avery recently answered some questions I had about their recently released recipes. Beer people are cool, use that!
In short you need to start slow and small to grow the yeast without stress. When I've done this my first step is a very small 100ml starter which is 10g of DME, then p to 250ml starter and so on and it has proven successful. I will usually stop at 1L and store the yeast at that point for future use.
kzimmer0817
Well-Known Member
I guess I'm going to have to purchase the "book" about Yeast.
1. using sanitary technique, pour the yeast from a few bottles of craft beer (Bell's Amber Ale in this example) into this small starter consisting of 10g of DME dilluted to 100 ml water.
2. after a couple days, decant the liquid and pour the slurry into the 250 ml starter (25g DME in enough water to get 250ml).
3. repeat #2 and pour into the 500 ml starter (50 g DME to 500 ml volume)
Somewhere, I got the idea that you didn't decant in the early stages; you simply pour in more wort to bring the volume up. I remember reading about doing 2 500ml steps in that you're simply adding wort for a few steps to get to 500ml. Then you decant the liquid and pitch the slurry into another 500ml starter before doing the same to get to the 1000ml in the next step.
Thanks,
Keith
kzimmer0817
Well-Known Member
I did some additional googling during a lull at work today and came upon the following link that does answers some of my questions and might be helpful to the OP.
http://byo.com/stories/article/indices/58-yeast/1693-yeast-culturing-from-bottles-techniques
Hope this helps.
Respectfully submitted,
Keith
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