18 month old Chimay Yeast

So I figured out that the yeast in my Chimay Red is 18 months old. Do I have any chance in hell of culturing it? Thanks

Only one way to find out, try it.

That's pretty old. It might be possible, since people have reported yeast staying viable for up to two years, but it may just be easier to get White Labs 500 or Wyeast 1214 since both are harvested from Chimay and will be the same strain.

Its been 24 hrs sense I made the starter. The starter is split between two 32 oz mason jars with a gravity of about 1.025. They are at 85 Fahrenheit. I read someone else's findings that the yeast needed to be left for a few days to start doing anything.

Stout Man - That is kind of high, but if your just doing a starter and just use the cake it should be OK. You can always shake it like a crying baby to stir up the yeast and oxygenate it until it takes off.
Today I'm trying my hand at starting a yeast starter from Rouges Red Ale, sitting at 65F right now.

I'm just keeping the temperature high because I read that Belgian yeast this old would need a higher temperature to get it started. here are some pics of what i believe is yeast on the bottom of the starter. It appears that this "cake" has grown like I have seen in other starters but I have still not seen any bubble activity.






If I were to get some more yeast is it ok to put the yeast in the same starter or make a new one?

"If I were to get some more yeast is it ok to put the yeast in the same starter or make a new one?"
well you dont know if thats contamanted or not,

how did you steralize the wort before adding the yeast
bactera in there will make a cloudly mass at the bottom as well

the best way to do what you are trying to do is with agar and a petri dish
its really not hard and you can make sure you are just growing yeast.

there is tons of information out there on this , just look on mushroom growing sites
there method is the same in every regard ,yeast and mushroom micilla both love malt-agar.

if you do it this way you can take a cuture from anything and isolate it and make all the starters you want

you can get presteralized agar and dishes
here

the wort was boiled for 20 minutes. i just did a taste test and everything is fine, still sweet. i did read that this yeast may take a while to start on wyeast. how much more time should i give the yeast before i just give up? I included 1 gram of fermaid k in the boil. I also poured the wort back and forth between 2 mason jars for 10 mins to get the wort as aerated as i could, besides all the shaking i did.

i'd just be so happy if i started to see some bubbles.

It should be OK. The way I remember it is Chimay is bottle conditioned for 18 months before it can be sold.

Well I have a bottle of blue that was bottled 5-6 months ago according to the date on the cork.

Kauai_Kahuna said:

You can always shake it like a crying baby to stir up the yeast and oxygenate it until it takes off.

Click to expand...

Just spit a little beer on my monitor... :cross:

Ok, this is just messed up.

So I drive back to the brew store on monday to get some white labs yeast because the chimay yeast i was trying to harvest wasn't doing anything.

I end up with wlp550 and have a good 1/2 gallon starter going. i am planning on stepping it up to the full gallon because the beer i'm making has a high og.

i still had the starter from the chimay yeast sitting on my dresser. i didn't want to dump it just in case something happened. well i looked out of the corner of my eye tonight and it was bubbling. i swirled it up and there were a few giant clusters of new yeast in the starter.

the question is what do i do now? use the chimay yeast starter or the wlp550 yeast starter?

i'm confident that i can take any yeast slurry from either of the starters and make a 15% glycerine solution that I can then freeze so it won't go to waste.

i just hate telling my yeast that i grew it in a starter just to be frozen because it was expecting to make a whole bunch of beer.

I would use the wyeast unless the harvested yeast showed signs of being 100% healthy. I think it's great to harvest yeast but really Ihave a feeling Wyeast has better equipment and people banking Chimay yeast from the brewery compared to me stepping up the dregs from a 2year bottle so I'd use thiers.

I just started the same yeast from a 1/4" cake stored under sterile (boiled) water that was 25 months old. It even spent a short time when the fridge failed. I put it into a growler of leftover wort 1.059SG. It took about 36 hrs, and took off. I just racked to a secondary after 4 days to clean it up. We will see if the taste profile is correct, but I suspect it will be fine.