Endless Starter?

[pete20]

I use mainly one kind of yeast for most of my beers and am wondering why not just have an endless starter?

Ideally it would be a conical-type container where you could draw some yeast off for brew days, and another opening at the top to drop in extract from time to time & keep it happy and growing. An integrated stir plate, temp control, etc could be add-ons for a later date. For the time being I'm thinking that room temp and the occasional swirling of the vessel would be enough.

If yeast won't autolyze for a year at least then it seems like this could work, and I'd much rather buy just one packet per year of my favorite US-05 than the dozen or more I go through now.

Is there any reason this wouldn't work? Anyone doing this already?

 

[dukeredhair]

the only concern I would have is contamination. If you were to keep the vessel around that long and open it that many times it seems like eventually you'd get something unwanted in there. That said if you kept your processes clean I'd bet you could keep it going for a long while.

 

[dcott]

After a certain number of generations, the yeast will mutate, which could create some problems. But you could probably get 10-15 generations at least out of this type of system, would be my guess.

Any microbiologists want to jump in and expound upon my rudimentary understanding of yeast reproduction?

 

[Stauffbier]

I just make big starters, cold crash, decant, and wash the yeast just like a batch of beer. Then split up into jars. Then take one jar and repeat the process. I'm not sure how many generations you could make this way, but you could store the jars as long as a year. When you feel like you're running low, just take out a jar and multiply it again. I do this every time I buy a new strain of liquid yeast, and I have a pretty good variety now.