reusing yeast from the bottle??

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Pivot

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 14, 2009
Messages
499
Reaction score
4
Location
Fredericton New Brunswick
Ok im sure this has been asked somewhere on here before but I cant find anything anywhere about it but I have a question. I have a bottle of fullers 2009 vintage ale thats bottle conditioned, and it says on the back that they use "unique yeast". is it possible to culture this yeast from the bottle?
 
Ok im sure this has been asked somewhere on here before but I cant find anything anywhere about it but I have a question. I have a bottle of fullers 2009 vintage ale thats bottle conditioned, and it says on the back that they use "unique yeast". is it possible to harvest this yeast from the bottle?

If it's not pasteurized you should be able to culture yeast from the bottle.
 
Drop the dregs of several bottles into a flask with fresh wort and aerate the heck out of it. Step it up s few more times and you have pitching quantitu.
 
Just remember, some breweries will bottle condition with a different yeast then they ferment in the primary with.
 
First, consider all of the information above. If you still want to culture this bottle and don't have a few bottles, do the following:

- Bring a stock pot of water to a boil and sterilize a propagation vessel (mason jar, glass peanut butter jar, 12 oz beer bottle, etc.)
- In a pot, mix a 10% malt extract solution (500 ml water, 50g light dme)
- Boil for 15 minutes
- Cover, cool and transfer to sterilized propagation vessel
- Swirl up the dregs of the bottle you wish to culture
- Pour the dregs into the vessel
- Either place foil over the top or an airlock with appropriate stopper or a loose fitting lid

Wait 2-3 days and you should see some sediment with a definitive layer of yeast. From there, you just need to either step up to a pitchable amount by feeding with more wort to the desired volume, or by transferring to your preferred yeast storage method (washing, slanting, freezing).

Hope this helps.
 
First, consider all of the information above. If you still want to culture this bottle and don't have a few bottles, do the following:

- Bring a stock pot of water to a boil and sterilize a propagation vessel (mason jar, glass peanut butter jar, 12 oz beer bottle, etc.)
- In a pot, mix a 10% malt extract solution (500 ml water, 50g light dme)
- Boil for 15 minutes
- Cover, cool and transfer to sterilized propagation vessel
- Swirl up the dregs of the bottle you wish to culture
- Pour the dregs into the vessel
- Either place foil over the top or an airlock with appropriate stopper or a loose fitting lid

Wait 2-3 days and you should see some sediment with a definitive layer of yeast. From there, you just need to either step up to a pitchable amount by feeding with more wort to the desired volume, or by transferring to your preferred yeast storage method (washing, slanting, freezing).

Hope this helps.

Do I need to do this with DME or could I use LME?
 
I specified DME because it is typically easier to store for longer periods. You could most certainly use LME. Just remember to multiply amount of DME by 1.25 to get amount of LME.
 
Just remember, some breweries will bottle condition with a different yeast then they ferment in the primary with.

I know people always like to give this advice, but you have to realize that the instances of that happening are really quite rare.

Very few bottle conditioned beers use a separate strain at bottling. There's really no point to doing that.

The only ones that do primarily are the Belgians, they guard their strains like fort knox from that since a lot of their strains are century old proprietary strains developed through open fermentation and therefore containing wild cultures from the air within the brewery itself, so they are pretty unique and therefore "trade secrets."

At least to their way of thinking.

Those are the ones that have a secondary strain for bottling.

The others are usually extremely high gravity beers like long aged barleywines and things like that. And you wouldn't want that fermentation yeast anyway, it would be pretty stressed out .

And the rest are pretty much covered here, or by http://www.nada.kth.se/~alun/Beer/Bottle-Yeasts/

So if someone wants to bottle harvest yeast, unless it's from a Belgian, more than likely you are getting it's primary fermentation strain. And even for many belgians the info can be found as to whether or not it is a primary yeast strain.

Or by googling a phrase such as "Harvesting (Beer Name) Yeast" to see if anyone on any forum or website has had any luck.
 
Actually you must use DME.

LME will open a hole in the space/time continuum and blast the lower half of your body through some sort of time warp.
 
The others are usually extremely high gravity beers like long aged barleywines and things like that. And you wouldn't want that fermentation yeast anyway, it would be pretty stressed out .

Damn I guess this yeast is useless then. This is a barleywine thats sold with the intention of storing for a long time it seems. Damn, lost my legs for nothing..
 
I'm working on some Afflingem yeast and it took 5 days to start doing anything after taking a couple glasses off the top of the bottle. It doesn't look infected after 2 weeks so I'm going to run it through a gallon of wort this weekend to see what happens.
 
You couldnt have responded sooner huh.....

I miss my legs.....
Reverse the polarity of your.....outlets.(yes all of them)

Take the yeast's poop and make a reverse starter out of it.

With any luck, your legs will reappear this year.
 
Back
Top