Commercial Beer Yeast Harvest List

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PurpleJeepXJ

Ah... Leafy Goodness
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First off let me state that this is a list from personal research on several public sites and I do not claim any of this research to be solely mine. I have researched a lot over the past few months and this is what I have come up with since there is no real up to date list. If a beer is controversial know that I have researched it and if I get several people saying I am wrong I will take it off the list. (confirmed) means from 3-4 sources. Oh and I don't indicate primary or bottling strains because I do not have a degree in microbiology. I will update this OP with an updated list every once and awhile so keep your eyes out. Enjoy and feel free to add!! :mug:


Allagash White
Anchor Liberty Ale
Anheuser-Busch Shock Top Belgian White
Avery 15
Avery 18
Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout
Bell’s Amber Ale (Confirmed)
Bell’s Oberon (Confirmed)
Bell’s Pale Ale (Confirmed)
Bell’s Two Hearted (Confirmed)
Boulevard Saison Brett
Boulevard Wheat
Cantillon
Captain Sig’s Northwestern Ale
Captain Lawerence Cuvee De Castleton
Cheval Blanc's La Blanche
Chimay Red Cap (Confirmed)
Chimay Triple (Confirmed)
Chimay Blue Cap (Confirmed)
De Proef Les Deux Brsseurs
Dog Fish Head Squall
Driftwood's Farmhand Ale
Erdinger Dunkelweiss (Confirmed)
Flying Dog Pale Ale
Franziskaner Hefeweissbier (Confirmed)
Gutmann Hefeweizen
Hanssens Oude Gueuze
Harpoon UFO Hefeweizen (Confirmed)
Harpoon UFO Pale Ale (Confirmed)
Harpoon UFO White (Confirmed)
Hoegaarden (Confirmed)
Huyghe Delirium Tremens (Confirmed)
Jolly Pumpkin (Confirmed)
Jolly Pumpkin ES Bam
Le Merle Saison
Lindeman's Cuve Renee Gueuze
New Belgium Fat Tire
Newcastle Brown Ale
Odell Sabortuer
Ommegang ALL
Orval (Confirmed)
Pretty Things Jack D'or
Paulaner Hefeweizen (Confirmed)
Rogue Brutal Bitter (Confirmed)
Rogue Chatoe
Rogue Dead Guy Ale (Confirmed)
Rogue Shakespeare Stout (Confirmed)
Russian River Temptation (Confirmed)
Saison D'Erpe-Mere
Saison Dupont (Confirmed)
Saison Foret
Schneider Weisse (Confirmed)
Sierra Nevada Kellerweis (Confirmed)
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Confirmed)
Stone Pale Ale (Confirmed)
Sweetwater IPA (Confirmed)
Sweetwater Sch’Wheat (Confirmed)
Sweetwater 420 (Confirmed)
Unibroue La Fin Du Monde
Unibroue Blanche de Chambley
 
Cool list!
I just did a batch with harvested yeast from a bottle of Chimay White (tripel). It came out great!
 
Not always and there is only one other list available and it is way out of date, http://www.nada.kth.se/~alun/Beer/Bottle-Yeasts/
Try researching which ones work without my list or that old one... It is very frustrating and I know those of us who harvest yeast would like an updated list instead of buying a beer, making a started and find out 1-2 days later that your work was pointless.
 
Can't you harvest yeast from any bottle conditioned beer? I'm still not understanding the point of this exercise but okay. :rockin:

It doesn't have to be bottle-conditioned. It can be force carbonated. It just needs to be non-filtered and non-pasteurized.
 
Thanks for the feedback so far!! I will add updates to the OP once I get a few new posts in order to not edit it every day. Make sure to tell your brew friends on HBT so we can get this list to grow!!
 
It came up a couple times on a few sites... I know, I don't think so either and that's why it is not confirmed.

Yeah... that seems really surprising! Newcastle is filtered, right?

What are the chances of some yeast cells making it through filtering?

Also, what are the chances of someone getting spontaneous fermentation and thinking it came from the commercial brew?
 
Saison D'Erpe-Mere (Personal)

All bottle conditioned Russian River stuff pretty much (personal on sours)

Hanssens Oude Gueuze (personal)

Lindeman's Cuve Renee Gueuze (personal)

Jolly Pumpkin (personal)

What about Cigar City beers? I have only ever had one but I think they are bottle conditioned.
 
Yeah... that seems really surprising! Newcastle is filtered, right?

What are the chances of some yeast cells making it through filtering?

Also, what are the chances of someone getting spontaneous fermentation and thinking it came from the commercial brew?
Both are possibilities and that is why I try to research everything that is brought up before posting. My new list is growing and I will update soon!!:mug:
 
Thanks for the list! Next time I'm down in the states I will pick a few of these up. Can't get **** up here in Canada... :(

Wait a minute! We get dead guy ale! I never noticed that there was any sediment at the bottom though. How do you harvest it?
 
I've successfully grown up dregs from Avery 15 (100% brett beer with a brett strain not commercially available), and Avery 18 (not sure if there is any brett added to this beer). Both went on to make one tasty beer!
 
Saison Foret

I also find Newcastle completely unlikely. It's possible somebody tried to culture from Newcastle and ended up with a strain floating around the house in the starter. It's also possible that might have been old information or a particular release of Newcastle.
 
Jolly Pumpkin ES Bam (personal) - unfortunately, now contains a bottling strain
Pretty Things Jack D'or (personal)
De Proef Les Deux Brsseurs (personal)
 
Thanks for the list! Next time I'm down in the states I will pick a few of these up. Can't get **** up here in Canada... :(

Wait a minute! We get dead guy ale! I never noticed that there was any sediment at the bottom though. How do you harvest it?
Buy a 6pk of beer. Pour all but last inch into glass and drink, do this 6 times. Sanitize bottle neck and lip inside and out. Pour the 6 1" full bottles into a flask with room temp wort. Wort is typically made from extra light DME. I mix mine to a hydro reading of around 1.040. Place on stirplate and start it on a gentle stir for 12-18hrs. Decant solution for several days. Then start over using the yeast from decanting mixed with a new batch of wort. Repeat until you get the desired amount of yeast. That is as simple as I can make it. I cant find it anymore, maybe you will have better luck, but there is a guy from this site that has a coupe youtube videos on yeast starters and decanting that are perfect explanations.
 
Buy a 6pk of beer. Pour all but last inch into glass and drink, do this 6 times. Sanitize bottle neck and lip inside and out. Pour the 6 1" full bottles into a flask with room temp wort. Wort is typically made from extra light DME. I mix mine to a hydro reading of around 1.040. Place on stirplate and start it on a gentle stir for 12-18hrs. Decant solution for several days. Then start over using the yeast from decanting mixed with a new batch of wort. Repeat until you get the desired amount of yeast. That is as simple as I can make it. I cant find it anymore, maybe you will have better luck, but there is a guy from this site that has a coupe youtube videos on yeast starters and decanting that are perfect explanations.

What would be wrong with going directly from a bottle(or 6) to a full starter in a half gallon growler? It seems like the yeast in 6 bottles of beer would be enough to make that happen without having to step it up.

I guess my question is, how do you know when you have enough yeast?
 
That is a good question... I really am confused about that too. I just keep it going until I can decant about a half inch of yeast in a pint jar. I know how to harvest yeast and make starters according to the suggested sizes in beersmith but I have no idea how to actually know how many yeast are in a volume of a starter other than what is predicted and I guess that is done by someone with a phd.
 
What would be wrong with going directly from a bottle(or 6) to a full starter in a half gallon growler? It seems like the yeast in 6 bottles of beer would be enough to make that happen without having to step it up.

I guess my question is, how do you know when you have enough yeast?

The best you can do is estimate. The yeast doubling time (under optimum condition) is 1.5 to 2 hours.

If you have a very large quantity of yeast cells, then you won't get that kind of speed. It might take a whole 24 hours to double.

If you have a small amount of yeast (like the small amount from a few bottles of beer), then you'll get closer to the 1.5 to 2 hours of doubling time.

Under perfect conditions, you could theoretically go from 1 yeast cell to 100 billion yeast cells in just 3 days.

There is usually way more than 1 yeast cell in the bottom of a bottle-conditioned beer, but on the other hand, our yeast is not in perfect conditions.

So, what I do is check to see how long it takes for the starter to drop from the OG to the FG. If it takes longer than a day, I decant the liquid off the top and add fresh wort. I'll do this until I can get the starter wort to drop from OG to FG in just 24 hours.

With the Chimay White bottle, it took me about 1 week, and I replaced the wort 3 times.

Mathematically, using 6 bottles instead of 1 will only save you about 4 hours.
 
I was able to successfully harvest and use yeast from a bottle of Blanche de Chambley and La Fin Du Monde, both from Unibroue, using nothing more than the dregs from the bottle and a can of Malta.

I noticed that Unibroue Brewery beers are not listed and they bottle condition with additional yeast, making them a prime candidate for harvesting.
 
I'm pretty sure Unibroue has one specific strain of yeast they use for carbonation though. Could be wrong but they seem to be the same.

I've harvested the yeast from Driftwood's Farmhand Ale, the Unibroue offerings, and the dregs from Cantillon. Won't really know how well that least one worked for a while.
 
I finally found a 6'r of cooper's sparkling ale. It's popular down under to harvest the commercial yeast from these to brew with. I'm gunna give it a shot. The ale has a dark sort of fruity taste to it,kind of malty with that.
 
I've had luck with the "Chatoe" Rogue line (Rogue Oregasmic and Wet Hop) - but both times I've done it it's taken forever to really kick off. I should note that in both cases I harvested the dregs from 2 bottles and did it during the winter when my house is pretty cool - think 62-64ish. In the end though I get a really nice yeast harvest that chews through just about whatever I can throw at it.

The second time I harvested from the primary and I have a few jars left in the fridge. Gotta get brewing!
 
This is much more a question than a reply. What is a bottling strain? I have heard that a number of producers use a yeast that will not reproduce the same as the original strain when they bottle. You can harvest and propogate and it may make good beer that may in fact be close to the original but will not be the same. I have specificaly heard this about New Belgian.
 
The primary strain is typically closely guarded and proprietary so what most breweries will do is bottle condition with a separate strain in order to add a slightly different flavour and to sorta age the beer. You can brew with bottling strains and still make great beer. What you harvest from the bottle may or may not be the primary strain, bottling strain, or even a combo of both. Unless we are the master brewer of those breweries or a microbiologist with fancy equipment we will never really know which we are harvesting. Either way, this thread is of which successful harvests we have had and in reality that is all we need as home brewers since no matter how hard we try we can not as small brewers make the same beer as the big guys... no matter how full of ourselves we are. Hopefully the first part of that answered your question.
 
You can add Boulevard Wheat to the list, I did it as my first harvest experiment and it took right off
 
Cheval Blanc's La Blanche is harvestable and I have confirmed with the brewery it is the same strain used for conditioning and fermenting.
 
The primary strain is typically closely guarded and proprietary so what most breweries will do is bottle condition with a separate strain in order to add a slightly different flavour and to sorta age the beer. You can brew with bottling strains and still make great beer. What you harvest from the bottle may or may not be the primary strain, bottling strain, or even a combo of both. Unless we are the master brewer of those breweries or a microbiologist with fancy equipment we will never really know which we are harvesting. Either way, this thread is of which successful harvests we have had and in reality that is all we need as home brewers since no matter how hard we try we can not as small brewers make the same beer as the big guys... no matter how full of ourselves we are. Hopefully the first part of that answered your question.

I understood that the bottling strain is often selected for flocculence, to leave a clear final product. They may well be a "clean" strain that produces few characteristic esters. There is not as much concern about or even desire for ester production with these strains, as the greatest part of fermentation has already happened with the primary strain, with its ester profile already accomplished in the beer.
 
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