What to do w/ Bell's house yeast?

So I made my first attempt at bottle-harvesting. I chose a low-grav Bell's beer and everything went perfectly. Over the course of about two weeks, I slowly stepped up the yeast to about 1 quart.

I really did it just to see how the bottle-harvest process works and didn't have a brew planned. Since I don't have any brews on deck, I just washed it and wound up with 3 pint Mason jars, each with a nice amount of Bell's House yeast.

I've done some reading about this yeast's properties, but am interested in others' input on how this yeast behaves. I hear that, up around 70-72, it throws off those awesome fruity, pineapple-y esters that make Oberon into Oberon. Does anyone else have any experience of how this yeast works at low temps? Mid 60s? Upper 60s?

Thanks all! And I'll be sure to post my results from my own experiments.

JonM said:

So I made my first attempt at bottle-harvesting. I chose a low-grav Bell's beer and everything went perfectly. Over the course of about two weeks, I slowly stepped up the yeast to about 1 quart.

I really did it just to see how the bottle-harvest process works and didn't have a brew planned. Since I don't have any brews on deck, I just washed it and wound up with 3 pint Mason jars, each with a nice amount of Bell's House yeast.

I've done some reading about this yeast's properties, but am interested in others' input on how this yeast behaves. I hear that, up around 70-72, it throws off those awesome fruity, pineapple-y esters that make Oberon into Oberon. Does anyone else have any experience of how this yeast works at low temps? Mid 60s? Upper 60s?

Thanks all! And I'll be sure to post my results from my own experiments.

Click to expand...

I've used it twice now, on THA clones. I pitch at 64 and ramp up gradually to 70 at 3 weeks. It seems to work well in the mid 60's if I pitch a healthy starter. You'll like it.

Sweet. Thanks!