kpr121
Well-Known Member
This Saturday morning I brewed up 10 gallons of a Two Hearted Ale clone. I had intentions of splitting the batch between US05 and WLP029, but my wife brought home a case of Oberon around lunchtime. So I got the brilliant idea to harvest the yeast from the dregs of the bottles. I’ve done this before but had a full week to properly step up a starter from a six pack.
I knew that I didn’t want my chilled wort sitting for that long without having any yeast in it, so I decided to try to harvest as much yeast as I could. Had a couple friends over and we killed all but about 4 bottles. Each bottle was carefully poured into a glass until the sediment was just starting to get ready to come out the bottle. I flamed the bottle lip and poured into a 1 liter starter with OG of approx 1.030 (ambient temps were around 68 and I had been swirling the starter enough that my wife was mad at me for loving yeast more than her).
The last bottle dregs probably got poured around 8 PM Saturday. Yesterday morning I didn’t see many signs of fermentation (other than a thin layer dusting of yeast/dregs at the bottom of starter) but decided to made up another 1 liter of 1.040. I then mixed everything together into a gallon jug and went back to the swirling. This morning I still didn’t see any real krausen or many bubbles forming but I got nervous and just pitched the entire starter in my 5.5 gallons of 1.064 Two Hearted clone set at 63F. I also applied pure O2 for about 1 minute 30 seconds.
So my questions:
How much active yeast did I get from 20 bottles of Oberon?
Is there a chance that the yeast was multiplying in the starter even though I saw very little signs of fermentation?
How long should I wait before dumping my backup of US-05 cake in the fermenter?
I want to try to keep the bells strain going for at least a couple generations of brews but I may just have to abandon this batch and start a properly stepped up starter with the four remaining bottles.
I’ll be sure to update this thread with my results as this brew progresses.
I knew that I didn’t want my chilled wort sitting for that long without having any yeast in it, so I decided to try to harvest as much yeast as I could. Had a couple friends over and we killed all but about 4 bottles. Each bottle was carefully poured into a glass until the sediment was just starting to get ready to come out the bottle. I flamed the bottle lip and poured into a 1 liter starter with OG of approx 1.030 (ambient temps were around 68 and I had been swirling the starter enough that my wife was mad at me for loving yeast more than her).
The last bottle dregs probably got poured around 8 PM Saturday. Yesterday morning I didn’t see many signs of fermentation (other than a thin layer dusting of yeast/dregs at the bottom of starter) but decided to made up another 1 liter of 1.040. I then mixed everything together into a gallon jug and went back to the swirling. This morning I still didn’t see any real krausen or many bubbles forming but I got nervous and just pitched the entire starter in my 5.5 gallons of 1.064 Two Hearted clone set at 63F. I also applied pure O2 for about 1 minute 30 seconds.
So my questions:
How much active yeast did I get from 20 bottles of Oberon?
Is there a chance that the yeast was multiplying in the starter even though I saw very little signs of fermentation?
How long should I wait before dumping my backup of US-05 cake in the fermenter?
I want to try to keep the bells strain going for at least a couple generations of brews but I may just have to abandon this batch and start a properly stepped up starter with the four remaining bottles.
I’ll be sure to update this thread with my results as this brew progresses.