Yeast starter flocculation (video)

Wyeast 1968 on stir plate 10 hours in.

 

Its a trick, its actually leftover egg drop soup

 

Not sure this is technically a video of yeast "flocculation" but it's still interesting to see your yeast starter in action!

From the White Labs website:

Flocculation

Brewers have created their own unique vocabulary. Words such as pitching, attenuation, and flocculation take on special meaning to brewers. Pitching is adding yeast to wort to start fermentation. Attenuation is the percentage of sugars yeast consume during fermentation. The magical art of yeast coming together, dropping to the bottom of a fermentor, is called flocculation.

Flocculation is a desirable and important characteristic that is unique to brewers yeast. When brewers yeast nears the end of fermentation, single cells aggregate into clumps of thousands of cells, and drop to the bottom of the fermentor, leaving clear beer behind. If yeast flocculate too early, the beer will be underattenuated and sweet. If yeast do not flocculate, the beer will be cloudy and have a yeasty taste.

Most strains of yeast, which brewers call "wild" yeast, do not flocculate well, and remain in suspension for extended periods of time. The ability to flocculate is a product of natural selection. Brewers have continually collected yeast either from the bottom or top of a fermentor and in doing so, selected for increasingly flocculent stains. The chemistry of flocculation is complex, and will be the subject of a future article.

 

Oh it's in flocculation mode in this video. If it wasn't for the stir plate it would all be on the bottom of the flask. 1968 starts out just like other yeasts do on the stir plate, but finishes up quickly eating all the sugars. It then starts to clump together or flocculate when it's done. It's interesting to watch it, one minute it's creamy and then very quickly it changes to what's in this video.

I looks exactly like egg drop or egg flower soup!

 

This is my house yeast. When it looks like that on the stirplate, it's done. I put it in the fridge.

 

Looks like a lava lamp.

 

Thanks for making the video. I am pitching 1968 tomorrow and this is what my starter looks like. Funny thing--I searched using "flocculation" and "egg". I didn't even put 1968 into the search. Your post came up. Bizarre stuff!

 

I have a egg drop starter going right now, it's going to be pitched shortly (just about to start the boil). I really like 1968, makes great beer.

 

I pitched my starter of 1968 today and it is starting to jug along about five hours later. Any tips? I usually rack to a secondary after about a week, but figured I'd leave it for about two if all else holds true with gravity readings. They say it clears really well, so maybe I should just leave it in the primary for three weeks and call it good.