havesting yeast from high gravity beers...yes or no?

Hello everyone
Is it true that harvesting and reusing yeast from higher gravity beers(1.070+)
is not a good idea cause the yeast was stressed too much and as a result will mutate and cause off flavors in future batches?..or is this mumbo jumbo?..peace

If you build up a starter, it's absolutely, fundamentally NOT TRUE. I may get flamed for that, but there's a significant body of evidence supporting it, so I'm not going to argue.

Now, if you're bottle culturing, there is a very good chance yeast was repitched at bottling. Often, it's not the same yeast used for fermentation. Caveat emptor.

I'm resurrecting this to ask the same question rather than starting a new thread.

I've got some yeast I want to harvest from a beer sitting at about 8% ABV. I pitched well, and kept the yeast at their optimal temps. I also added the sucrose (table sugar) 2 1/2 days after fermentation took off so that the more complex sugars got eaten first and the simple sugars eaten last (make the yeast do most of the hard work first)

Thoughts on yes or no?

sure, you can harvest it. you'll just have a higher percentage of dead cells. i don't think it is a big deal if you're making a starter.

Great, and I forgot to mention that this yeast is the Wyeast Canadian / Belgian Strand that has an alcohol tolerance of 12% ABV. I've read that people are concerned that the high ABV will kill the yeast and I assume that they are talking about yeast that isn't generally used for high ABV beers (WLP001 comes to mind)

Is this correct?

One of the best beers I've made was put on the yeast cake from a high ABV Imperial Stout.

Don't know any of the should or shouldn't s just anecdotal experience.

Yeah 8% is not that high. I harvested yeast from a BDSA that was 13%. I built it back up with a starter and the beer turned out great.