Culturing live yeast... from a can???

I had my first Fat Tire experience ever this weekend (*tear*) and needless to say it was wonderful. I noticed that the cans of Fat Tire we had said they were can-conditioned with live yeast.

Would there be any reason why one could not culture live yeast from a can?

yes, you can culture the yeast, but the yeast may not be the same yeast as the primary fermenting yeast.
In a lot of commercial brewery, bottling yeast is used.
You can try and brew a batch, but it may not have the same characteristic as the original yeast.

undallas said:

In a lot of commercial brewery, bottling yeast is used.

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Just the opposite is true, very few use a different strain than the orginal...it's pretty much only the Belgians that try to hide their fermentation strain, and a few others...but mostly the bottle conditioned beers are single strains...


There's no comprehensive list of which uses which, but this one is all we really have Yeasts from Bottle Conditioned Beers

IIRC New Belgium doesn't use separate and different strains.

But going back to your original question, if you leave some in the bottom, and flame the lip of the can, you should be able to do it...Just make a starter and pour the dregs in, if it works it works, if not, no harm no foul.

Revvy, thanks for the correction. Since you mentioned Belgian's sneaky act, I guess what I brewed over the weekend could be different. I brewed a Delirium Tremens clone with bottled cultured (DT) yeast. It is doing well in the primary now...
I took the recommendation from Denny Conn's at his Northern Brewer DT thread

I'll keep my finger cross on this one.

its hit and miss really I did a Saison Dupont culture from 2 bottles worked great also Hennepin worked but Hoegarden failed miserably.


I say go for it.

Here's from the notes section of the thingy I posted.

General Observations

Bottle conditioned British ales seems to have the primary strain as a rule. A few exceptions have been reported.

Bavarian Hefe-Weizens normally don't have the primary strain, and may well be pasteurized. Schneider Weisse seems to be an exception. Perhaps Schöfferhofer as well. Others?

Bottle conditioned Belgian ales may or may not have the primary strain, alone or together with some other strain(s). Check extra carefully for aroma/flavour characteristics of the starter.

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New Belgium considers their yeast proprietary and is known to use a different strain for bottle conditioning after filtering out the primary yeast.

Can a beer be bottle conditioned with live yeast, then after conditioning is completed, get pasteurized, killing the yeast?

silverbrewer said:

Can a beer be bottle conditioned with live yeast, then after conditioning is completed, get pasteurized, killing the yeast?

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To my science knowledge, you can bring the beer temperature up to the pasteurize temperature to killed the original yeast and introduce new bottling yeast during bottling session. I have done the same for sake making to kill the yeast to prevent further fermenting which usually yields sour sake.