Growing yeast from a bottle of Dead Guy Ale
I saw on a YouTube video () to sanitize the bottle with vodka around the cap of the beer. The used a lighter around the bottle cap before removing the cap. Also make sure to sanitize the beer bottle opener. Open the beer and pour out 3/4th of the beer carefully not to disturb the layer of yeast in the bottom of the bottle. I then put in 2 teaspoons of sugar in the bottle, and capped the bottle with a new sanitized cap until it is ready to be used. I grew the sample in a mason jar for canning. I had the jar in a water bath for canning without the lid on the mason jar. I brought the water to a boil. I used 1 7 oz. bottle of Malta Goya combined with 14 oz. water. Bring to a boil and boil for 15 minutes. Carefully get the Mason jar out of the boiling water, dump the water out and combine the boiling hot Malta Goya mixture. Run cold water over the Mason jar until it cools down, this takes a few minutes. Make sure to use canning tongs or something to hold the jar as it will be very hot.
Once the wort is now cool open the dead guy ale bottle, sanitizing everything again and swirl the beer sugar mixture together to collect all of the yeast in there. Once the yeast from the bottle is combined with the wort close the lid and put it on top of your fridge for several days. It took 3 or 4 days until I say yeast activity.
After I saw signs of activity I made more Malta Goya wort with 2 7oz. bottle with 14 oz. water. I boiled less time, and chilled the wort in the kitchen sink with an ice bath. I put this new wort and the whole starter sample in a 1000 ml flask with a stir plate and stir wand for 16 hours. The next day I made a 1 gallon batch of beer with a pound of malt extract and a gallon of water. Ok so its a little more than a gallon.
If this sample beer tastes like beer then wash the yeast and keep in mason jars until ready to brew. See YouTube video () on how to wash yeast. I was able to get 4 mason jars of smack pack style of yeast. I know Malta Goya has high fructose corn syrup in it and has caramel coloring, which will darken the beer. Im not too concerned with the color, more about the taste.
I played with the brew water to try and make the water like Munich Germany.
http://www.brewersfriend.com/water-chemistry/
I boiled 5.5 gallons of tap water for 30 minutes then I added 6.5 g baking soda, 1 g gypsum, 8 g calcium chloride, and 4 g Epsom salt. After the boil I chilled the water and combined the water with 4 gallons of distilled water to get 9.5 gallons of brew water. The water did taste ok.
The say before brew day I used 2 Malta Goya 70z bottles with 21oz water and boiled it for 15 minutes. Then a 15 minute ice bath. I put this wort in the 1000ml flask with 2 yeast cakes from 2 mason jars. I let this stir for almost 20 hours. The next morning (brew day) the flask had nice foam to it.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/can-you-brew-recipe-rogue-dead-guy-ale-175382/
He is making 6 gallons with 70% efficiency. Im making 5 gallons and Im shooting for 65% efficiency. Also to figure up my mash/sparge water I use this page: http://www.brew365.com/mash_sparge_water_calculator.php
Dead Guy ale clone
8.75 2 Row
3.5 Munich
1.25 Crystal 20
1.17 oz Perle 90 Minutes
0.95 Saaz 1 Minute
Yeast from a bottle of Dead Guy Ale
I attempted to step mash. I did mess up my first amount of mash water. I put 5 liters of water of 13.5 pounds of grain. The water disappeared into the beer, should have used more water. I followed up with 2 additional additions of mash water (7 liters of boiling water to try and bring the water temp up to 152 and a final 6 liters to bring up to 162) to equal 5 gallons of water. While the mash was sitting I started my sparge water. I didnt have enough time to get the sparge water up to 170 degrees before I started sparging. The water was close to 150 degrees. I sparged for an hour. I have a homebrew pump so the sparge water is continually circulating around the grains. The water did continue to heat during the whole process. I turned off the electric turkey fryer when the wort was 180 degrees. I still ran the sparge with a pump for another 10 to 15 minutes. The wort had a lot of bubbles in it, similar to soapy water.
I collected most of the wort, I could not fit all of the wort into my turkey fryer because I can only hold 6 gallons of water. Slowly over the 90 minute boil I added additions of wort from the cooler to the turkey fryer. After adding the hops as follows over the times listed above. I added Perle for 90 minutes and Saaz for 1 minute of the boil. I cooled the wort with my wort chiller, by slowing letting the boiling hot wort drain through and I had ice bucket circulating cold water with ice water going against the wort. It took about 20 minutes to cool the wort to around 85 degrees. The whole time my wort was draining into my fermentation bucket I had an aerator running with a .05m diffusion stone. The aerator produced a lot of thick white foam. I had to use my mash paddle and control the foam by swirling the paddle. I ended up with a little more than 5 gallons of 1.051 wort with some left in the turkey fryer. I think I used to much water.
I do not know if it was because of all the foam from the aerator or if it because the yeast in a stir plate, but I saw activity in the aeration lock or bubbler in 2 hours. The bubbler was bubbling every 2 or 3 seconds. I brewed on Sunday afternoon, as of Wednesday night the bubbler was still bubbling every 6 or 7 seconds. Im curious if my original gravity reading was off, because usually my beers start sometime during the night after I brew, and stop or come very close to stopping by the third day.
After 2 weeks in the primary fermenter I kegged my clone beer. Before putting all of the beer in the keg I siphoned out a few ounces in a beer glass. Even using Malta goya with caramel coloring may have only changed my beers color slightly. When held up to a light the beer is copper. I remember Dead Guy Ale as being amber or copper in color. When drinking the beer warm and flat I got the hops and a slight bready flavor. Seemed nice and did remind me of drinking Dead Guy Ale. Now I have to let the beer get cold and carbonate. Some aging time might be good too. For a beer like this aging time is a few weeks, more time like a few months may reveal a very good beer.
I plan on making my own test tubes like White Labs. Washed yeast works long after the first few weeks like most homebrewers are made to believe.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/testing-limits-yeast-viability-126707/
Test tubes:
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/category/lab-supplies
These are supposed to be the same test tubes White Labs uses.
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