hefeweizen yeast harvest

[ski36t]

Has anyone ever tried to harvest yeast from a commercial hefeweizen to use with there homebrew? (or any commercial no-filtered beer)

I was thinking this might be a good way to get some free yeast and also a good way to replicate a commercial beer because you have the exact yeast that they used.

Could you just keep the bottom 1/3 of the beer and "clean" it as you would any of your other homebrew yeasts, or are the yeasts spent at this point?

 

[Mikey]

Most/many commercial Hefeweizens use a different yeast for bottle conditioning than for main fermentation, typically a clean lager yeast.

Since the correct yeast is available to homebrewers and is very affordable, I wouldn't bother with trying to cultivate from a bottle.

 

[ski36t]

Most/many commercial Hefeweizens use a different yeast for bottle conditioning than for main fermentation, typically a clean lager yeast.

Since the correct yeast is available to homebrewers and is very affordable, I wouldn't bother with trying to cultivate from a bottle.

Did not know that. Thanks

 

[New Brew]

I have heard the same thing as Mikey, with one exception. Though I have never tested it (still new to this myself), I have heard that Schneider-Weiss does not add a lager yeast to their bottles, so the brewing yeast can be harvested from SW bottles.

As I said, haven't tried it myself, so I can't tell you if it works, but there are definitely threads around this site with instructions on how to harvest yeast from bottles if you want to go for it.