Thanks to the advice on this board, I tried my hand at yeast farming three and a half days ago. I love me some Dogfish Head IPA in any of their incarnations so I began looking for a bottle conditioned version from this producer. That was surprisingly difficult. I found ONE bottle of their 75 Minute IPA (Johnny Cask) that claimed to be bottle conditioned. The dreg layer at the bottom of the bottle looked very questionable...no more than a millimeter thick...so I was apprehensive about how much yeast was actually in this supposed bottle conditioned IPA, but, what the heck I thought, at least I'd have the pleasure of drinking a really good IPA even if no viable yeast was contained in it.
So what to use as a grow medium? I was all set to hit my local supply shop and cook up some wort until I stumbled on using Malta as a medium on this very forum! As I currently live in PR, 3/4 of the drink aisle in any store is made up of about 10 different varieties of Malta. Grabbed a 6 of Malta Polar for $2.15. Yes the little 7oz bottles are kind of cool looking!
Boiled two bottles of Malta and one bottle of water (21 oz total) for about 5 minutes to get MOST of the CO2 out (geez they carbonate the frack out of this stuff!!). Shook the be'jesus out of it for another 10 minutes to aerate and get most of the rest of the CO2 off (did I mention that they put a LOT of CO2 in Malta!!). Put it in my clear glass container (recovered cider bottle), cooled the Malta and warmed the yeast to room temp, pitched the pitiful amount of yeast into the Malta, locked it and waited.
24 hours...nothing.
48 hours...still nothing. Getting worried.
72 hours...STILL nothing. Oh well...I'll dump and clean up tomorrow and chalk it up to a "learning process."
84 hours...Came home for lunch and it's bubbling like CRAZY with a satisfying layer of white building up on the bottom of my container!
Soooo...Now that I am the proud owner of millions of baby Dogfish Head yeast cells, guess I should ask the assembled experts what the flavor profile this yeast imparts is? I know I like their product, but I am no where near expert enough to truly give anything but a complete WAG as to the flavors this yeast is likely to imparts. Can anyone help me out here?
I'll probably grow it one more time to get a usable quantity and then in the spirit of Dogfish Head, I'd like to try some sort of "off center" IPA and see how it turns out! Any suggestions?
So what to use as a grow medium? I was all set to hit my local supply shop and cook up some wort until I stumbled on using Malta as a medium on this very forum! As I currently live in PR, 3/4 of the drink aisle in any store is made up of about 10 different varieties of Malta. Grabbed a 6 of Malta Polar for $2.15. Yes the little 7oz bottles are kind of cool looking!
Boiled two bottles of Malta and one bottle of water (21 oz total) for about 5 minutes to get MOST of the CO2 out (geez they carbonate the frack out of this stuff!!). Shook the be'jesus out of it for another 10 minutes to aerate and get most of the rest of the CO2 off (did I mention that they put a LOT of CO2 in Malta!!). Put it in my clear glass container (recovered cider bottle), cooled the Malta and warmed the yeast to room temp, pitched the pitiful amount of yeast into the Malta, locked it and waited.
24 hours...nothing.
48 hours...still nothing. Getting worried.
72 hours...STILL nothing. Oh well...I'll dump and clean up tomorrow and chalk it up to a "learning process."
84 hours...Came home for lunch and it's bubbling like CRAZY with a satisfying layer of white building up on the bottom of my container!
Soooo...Now that I am the proud owner of millions of baby Dogfish Head yeast cells, guess I should ask the assembled experts what the flavor profile this yeast imparts is? I know I like their product, but I am no where near expert enough to truly give anything but a complete WAG as to the flavors this yeast is likely to imparts. Can anyone help me out here?
I'll probably grow it one more time to get a usable quantity and then in the spirit of Dogfish Head, I'd like to try some sort of "off center" IPA and see how it turns out! Any suggestions?
