miatawnt2b
Well-Known Member
When I started brewing about a year ago, I decided to make a frozen yeast bank from my primary yeast cakes. I bought a bunch of glass testubes with screw on lids, and some glycerine. I would pour the yeast from the primary into a quart mason jar and let it settle in the fridge for about 30 min. After that period of time, the slurry would settle into 3 layers. There would be a thick layer of trub at the bottom, a beige yeasty layer in the middle and a fairly clear (beer) layer at the top. I would take a clean and sanitized syringe and suck up the middle layer and put that in the test tube to settle further. Once the test tube had settled, I poured off the beer floating on top of the yeast, and repeated the process of shaking up the quart jar, letting it settle, grabbing the middle layer and putting that in the tube. After 3 times, I would pour off about half of the beer in the test tube, and add an equal amount of glycerine. Shake and put in a cooler in the freezer.
sound good?
So about 7 months ago, I made a belgian using WLP500 after which I froze 6 tubes of yeast from primary. Earlier this week, I wanted to begin stepping up a tube to make a nice starter. I did not have DME, so I went to the store and grabbed 6 bottles of Malta Goya. I took a vial of yeast from the freezer (it was still liquefied in the freezer so the glycerine did its job) and let it warm to room temp. I took 1 bottle of Malta Goya, added 1 cup of water and boiled it for 5 min to get out the CO2, making a wort of around 1.044. I then put the wort in my flask and started it spinning while the wort cooled to around 80F. After that I pitched the vial of yeast (shaking of course).
after 48 hours, i still had no fermentation of the starter, so I dumped that batch and did the same procedure again. This morning, 12 hours later, no fermentation. I am using a stirplate.
I have about 650 ml of starter wort and a very small amount of yeast in the test tube. I estimate the yeast to starter ratio to be about equivalent to if you would add 1 new vial of white labs yeast to a 5 gal batch.
I do remember that when I did my Belgian 7 months ago, I didn't make a starter, I just added the vial to 5 gal. It took about 4 days to start fermenting, but the wort there was 1.077.
Do you think I need to wait longer for the frozen yeast to wake up, or is my entire bank dead?
Thanks all,
-J
sound good?
So about 7 months ago, I made a belgian using WLP500 after which I froze 6 tubes of yeast from primary. Earlier this week, I wanted to begin stepping up a tube to make a nice starter. I did not have DME, so I went to the store and grabbed 6 bottles of Malta Goya. I took a vial of yeast from the freezer (it was still liquefied in the freezer so the glycerine did its job) and let it warm to room temp. I took 1 bottle of Malta Goya, added 1 cup of water and boiled it for 5 min to get out the CO2, making a wort of around 1.044. I then put the wort in my flask and started it spinning while the wort cooled to around 80F. After that I pitched the vial of yeast (shaking of course).
after 48 hours, i still had no fermentation of the starter, so I dumped that batch and did the same procedure again. This morning, 12 hours later, no fermentation. I am using a stirplate.
I have about 650 ml of starter wort and a very small amount of yeast in the test tube. I estimate the yeast to starter ratio to be about equivalent to if you would add 1 new vial of white labs yeast to a 5 gal batch.
I do remember that when I did my Belgian 7 months ago, I didn't make a starter, I just added the vial to 5 gal. It took about 4 days to start fermenting, but the wort there was 1.077.
Do you think I need to wait longer for the frozen yeast to wake up, or is my entire bank dead?
Thanks all,
-J