Unsuccessftul attempt at yeast reculturing...

[cweston]

I attempted to reculture the yeast from a bottle of Westmalle Dubbel several days ago. Nothing ever happened.

The bottle had a date stamped 2/3/06. I'm guessing this was 6 months from bottling. I assume the yeast had simply died at that point?

This is my first try at re-culturing: I made a starter from a cup of water, .5 cup wheat DME and a couple hops pellets—exactly the same starter, same procedure I use for liquid yeast.

I'm guessing I just need fresher beer for this to work. Any other thoughts?

 

[pigpen]

Curious to know why you put hop pellets in your yeast starter.Never heard of it! Do you notice a difference?

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

Putting a hop pellet or two in your starter is said to have antibacterial properties which may help protect your starter from infection.

 

[cgravier]

ive tried this with cimay several times and got nothing...the only difference is i used 2 tsp. d..m.e. with 1/2 c. of h20, your 1/2c. d.m.e to 1 c. h20 seems a little high gravity. off the top of my head i think `1 c. d.m.e. + 3 qt. h2o is my normal starter rate, so divide that by half you get 1/2c. d.m.e.+1.5 qt h20

im going by Dr. White from whites labs yeast and his recommended 1.040 starting gravity for strarters. he doesnt say you have to use hops either, but i know some people do. i dont, and the advatage is that when you drink the fermented mini-beer you can really taste what the yeast will taste like.

my control for the chimay duds was that after a few days of no signs of fermentation, i put some yeast in from my recent homebrew bottles, and sure enough they fermented out.

i think its the way they store the beer, which is warm. either that or they flash-pasteurize the boyttles before shipping out, killing the yeast.

 

[boo boo]

Did you check the OG of the starter? If the gravity was too high it might shock the yeast. !/2 cup of dme to a cup of water seems high. With regular dme I use 1 tbsp to a cup of water to get 1035 or 1040 Sg. Also you are starting with a small amount of yeast. I'm curious to know why you are using this yeast in the first place as most breweries don't use the same yeast to bottle with as they do to ferment.