How I Harvested PacMan Yeast

Alright so recently I harvested some PacMan Yeast from two bottles of Rogue Chocolate Stout. I'll go through how I did it and what worked for me and hopefully anyone out there trying to do the same can learn a bit, tweek what they need to, and save about $14 or so trying to get this stuff online.

So for starters I bought the bottles from a beer store out of the fridge. I took them home, dumped them into a growler leaving about 1/2in of beer in the bottle. I immediately capped with sanitized beer caps and put the bottles back in the fridge only because I didn't feel like doing the starter that night. I then drank said beer from the growler, very good I might add.

The day I did my starter I pulled the bottles out for about 2-3 hours and let them hit room temp and made a starter using 2 cups water and 1/2 cup DME. I sanitized everything and cooled the wort to about 68 degrees then sprayed each bottle with star san around the cap, shook them up, popped the caps, and then dumped them into the growler with my wort. I made sure I shook the wort very good before adding the yeast. For the next two days I shook the growler to keep everything moving in there every hour or so and especially in the morning when I woke up. Within about 36 hours I had noticeable fermentation and good bubble in the ferm lock every time I shook then the bubbles would slow down to one to two bubbles a min.

After about 48 hours I brewed another 2 cups water and 1/2 cup DME and added that to the mix. Continued to occasionally shake to keep things moving inside. By the end of 4 days I had a good collection of yeast which I posted a pic of at the end. I pitched this into a 1.061 beer. It didn't take off right away. After 48 hours I opened my ferm bucket and saw I had a huge layer about 3 inches think of foam and krausen. Only problem was there wasn't any air coming out of my blow off hose. I then proceeded to literally kick my ferm bucket and wouldn't you know immediately I had massive air coming through the hose into my blow off bucket and then a steady bubble after that. I don't know why this happened but the guy at my LHBS said that possibly all the CO2 was trapped under the krausen and foam and when I kicked it, it broke loose and let the CO2 out. He said he's seen that with wine before. I guess I'll never really know why. Anyway it is still fermenting right along today and I plan on washing this to use again. Enjoy the pics, they are in order of the process I used. Hope this helps someone trying to do the same. Oh and I'm fermenting about 65 degrees right now, I can't get it lower which I know most people do for PacMan.

Wow you rule, I fail. I used 2 bottles of dead guy and got mold after 3 days. And I had about that much as well.

Looks great. I would skip the air lock if you want really good activity. I also don't think your LHBS guy's answer makes any sense. The CO2 can't get trapped. If pressure builds up, something is going to come out of that airlock/blowoff tube. Probably had a leak somewhere that you sealed when you kicked it.

Cool.

Nice work. Definitely not an easy feat.

A problem with harvesting yeast this way is that it's difficult to estimate how much yeast you have. In my case with Pacman, I was trying to estimate by the volume of the yeast sediment - but how dense/packed is it? - gotta guess that too. So your total volume of starter is about a quart which is just less than a liter. It's possible the longer lag time on the main fermentation in your case is due to a low pitching rate. I was probably underpitching too, but I wasn't going to take the effort to step it up a couple more times.

If it's not too late you could top crop your fermenting beer and make another starter and then lather rinse repeat. Or maybe pitch on top of the primary cake. If I was yeast ranching, this is definitely a yeast I would keep on hand.

As far as your kicking the fermenter ... ever try that trick where you tap the bottom of your beer bottle on the top of your friends beer bottle? If you do it just right your friends beer will gush. Any time you agitate and especially vibrate a liquid with dissolved gas, it will rapidly off-gas. And when you drive off CO2 (like with a stirred starter) yeast will become more active. You must have set off a chain reaction. Maybe you just discovered a good trick to restart a stuck ferm!

Not only that, he displaced a small amount of volume when he kicked the bucket which resulted in air being pushed through the airlock.

I used 1 bottle of Rogue IPA and 1 bottle of Shakespeare stout to get my pacman dregs. Both had good amounts of live yeast and I'm currently brewing my 2nd batch with built up pacman dregs. 1st batch was a Shakespeare Stout clone and was crazy good. Love this yeast and will keep buying bottles of Rogue beer when I need more.

Cool. Any idea how long ago the rogue was bottled before you harvested?

badbrew said:

Wow you rule, I fail. I used 2 bottles of dead guy and got mold after 3 days. And I had about that much as well.

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I harvest from six Dead Guy Ales and it went nuts in my starter flask. I always use dregs from a 6 pack instead of bombers.

Bamsdealer said:

Cool. Any idea how long ago the rogue was bottled before you harvested?

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No idea. I still have the bottles in my recycling bin and can't find a date or anything stamped on them. Sorry

Hex23 said:

Nice work. Definitely not an easy feat.

A problem with harvesting yeast this way is that it's difficult to estimate how much yeast you have. In my case with Pacman, I was trying to estimate by the volume of the yeast sediment - but how dense/packed is it? - gotta guess that too. So your total volume of starter is about a quart which is just less than a liter. It's possible the longer lag time on the main fermentation in your case is due to a low pitching rate. I was probably underpitching too, but I wasn't going to take the effort to step it up a couple more times.

If it's not too late you could top crop your fermenting beer and make another starter and then lather rinse repeat. Or maybe pitch on top of the primary cake. If I was yeast ranching, this is definitely a yeast I would keep on hand.

As far as your kicking the fermenter ... ever try that trick where you tap the bottom of your beer bottle on the top of your friends beer bottle? If you do it just right your friends beer will gush. Any time you agitate and especially vibrate a liquid with dissolved gas, it will rapidly off-gas. And when you drive off CO2 (like with a stirred starter) yeast will become more active. You must have set off a chain reaction. Maybe you just discovered a good trick to restart a stuck ferm!

Click to expand...

Ha. Nice analogy about hitting the beer bottle. I forgot all about that. Like u said I have no idea why it kicked off like that. I just found it odd that it happened literally as I kicked tue ferm bucket. Perhaps it could be a new method for fixing stuck fermentations. Thanks for the input.

Well done!

Argh.

First attempt - nothing.

Second attempt - not looking promising.

Just call me Clyde.