Yeast harvesting experiment

[ReeseAllen]

I bought a 6-pack of Sierra Nevada Kellerweis last week and noticed the substantial amount of yeast at the bottom of the bottles. I decided to do a little experiment and see if I could harvest it, which I've never done before.

I boiled up a few ounces of water, dumped a handful of light DME into it, let it cool, and dumped the yeast from the bottom of a bottle into it. I put this into a sanitized tupperware container and loosely attached the lid.

I didn't see any activity for a few days so I just forgot about it. I came back to it yesterday (7 days after starting the experiment) and found this. The yeast appears to have build a strange, thin, wrinkly "kreuzen" over the top of the liquid. The texture is actually really intricate and cool-looking, I don't think my crappy camera phone really captures it. The mixture smells slightly sour and alcoholic as expected. Very little yeast seems to have settled to the bottom.

Anyone care to shed some light on what's happened here? Could I feasibly still turn this into a full size starter that's actually good to use for brewing?

 

[jescholler]

Very interesting. I don't know what to make of the pictures based on my experience.

I'm not sure SN conditions their beers with the original yeast. I've heard of breweries filtering out the Weiss yeast and adding back lager yeast. In that case, you wont' get a Weiss beer. I haven't done the research, but I doubt they use the Weiss yeast for bottle conditioning due to shelf life issues.

Edit: I stand corrected. It looks like they do use the Kellerweis strain for bottle conditioning:
http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=76265&sid=23c36b1660a488a0097815b633f3e373

Let us know how it turns out if you brew a batch with it.

 

[Freezeblade]

that looks kinda like a mini pellical, like from wild yeast.