Bell's Two Hearted Yeast Harvest

I'm planning on brewing a Bell's Two Hearted clone soon and picked up a 6 pack to possibly harvest my yeast from. Does anyone know if I will be successful? I've never harvested yeast before, but I have read a lot and watched some youtube videos about it. I'm also curious as to whether anyone knows if the strain present in the bottle will be the same stain Bell's uses for fermentation.

Yes it is easily done. If you search this topic you will find many other posts about it.

Here is a quick run down from my experience.

Use their Amber ale as it seems to harvest better.

Make sure to wait it out because I had no activity when harvesting from 4 bottles for 3 days. Then it went nuts.

I have not used the yeast yet so I can not tell you how it worked but I did try harvesting from two hearted and it did not work. The amber uses the same strain of yeast.

i would suggest the Pale ale. They use the same yeast strain in almost everything and i usually go with the lowest alcohol content I can find when i bottle Harvest.

Also, grab a lighter and sanitize the neck of the bottle before you pour the beer.

Also, plan your recipe for CRAZY atenuation. I think both times I used that strain it was at about 92% attenuation.

Well I had already picked up a 6-pack of the Two Hearted. I made a quick wort from some light DME and poured in the dregs of 3 bottles after shaking the mess out of the wort to aerate. I'll keep the thread posted of the progress.

I successfully did a 2 hearted harvest, but as others have pointed out, the yeast is stressed at that point. The beer turned out "ok", I had better results using 1272.

-d

is 1272 the yeast strain that the brewer uses?

No, they use a propriatary yeast strain. The only way to get it is bottle harvesting.

That being said, 1272 is the go to suggestion in clone recipes for people who don't bottle harvest

I tried it twice and the starter never took off with the 2hearted. I would try the amber ifI reharvested again.

DawgBrewer said:

Well I had already picked up a 6-pack of the Two Hearted. I made a quick wort from some light DME and poured in the dregs of 3 bottles after shaking the mess out of the wort to aerate. I'll keep the thread posted of the progress.

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i did this with 4 bottles of tha and it turned out amazingly well. it just took my starter a little while to get started. pitched 2 weeks later with amazing results.

I had great success with the pale ale. I have now adopted it as my house strain for pretty much any American ale I make.

I'm a little confused on the term "stressed" yeast. If my starter takes off and I can gradually step it up to about a litre... how would the yeast be stressed?

DawgBrewer said:

I'm a little confused on the term "stressed" yeast. If my starter takes off and I can gradually step it up to about a litre... how would the yeast be stressed?

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The yeast will only be as good as the yeast you start out with. The yeast left in the bottles of 2 Hearted Ale have had to deal with a high alcohol content and that isn't very condusive to propagate yeast. That "stresses" out the yeast. The ones that remain may not be as "healthy" and in turn not create as good of a beer as "healtier" yeast from thier Pale or Amber ales.

So in a way the current yeast pass those stressed traits onto their offspring? That would make sense. I've just never thought of it that way.

DawgBrewer said:

So in a way the current yeast pass those stressed traits onto their offspring? That would make sense. I've just never thought of it that way.

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Correct. That is why it is so important to start off with as healthy of yeast as you can. Also after many generations, the yeast can mutate and cause attenuation problems or even some off flavors.

I have used Oberon to harvest yeast from and got great results in cloning Two Hearted Ale, but the Amber or the Pale Ale will work as well. I emailed the brewery and asked a bunch of questions. Bell's uses the same strain of yeast for all their beers so any of them will work. The guy from Bell's that responded said that harvesting yeast from Two Hearted Ale would be difficult because of the high alcohol content and suggest Oberon because it is available every where or Pale Ale or Amber. I will certainly be using a lot Bell's yeast in the future.