A little help

[BigErn]

So I'm going to give all grain a try this comming week but ive been researching and asking a bunch of questions so im confident I have a handle on that process. Trying to make an Oberon clone.

My question is im going to try to harvest yeast from bells oberon and was wondering what the process for that is. How much water to DME and how many bottles of Oberon should I try to get Yeast out of?

Also when should I pitch the starter? Ive heard 24 hours and also a couple days?

 

[jppostKW]

I do this when getting pacman from rouge.. buy a six pack or a couple bombers drink it and immediately cap with a new sanitized bottle cap. put it in the fridge and repeat than make a starter 2 oz of DME and a pint of water boil for 10 minutes and cool put in starter vessel and shake the crap outta it. take another cup of boiled and cooled water and split it between your saved bottles by un capping flaming around the rim of the bottle to kill nasties and than dumping in the bottle swirl up the yeast sludge and dump it into your starter vessel. let it go for a couple days making sure you have yeast activity. it will probably be slight but the starter should get milky looking and have a thin layer of yeast at the bottom when acitvity has stopped put in fridge for 4 hrs or so to settle some more yeast. flame the opening of starter vessel and decant most of the liqiud saving a few oz to smell and taste to test for contamination. if all is good make another starter with 4 oz of dme and a quart of water add this to your starter vessel and let run for 3-4 days you should have more yeast than a whitelabs vial. before you pitch into your beer again throw in fridge to settle out the yeast, Pull out decant taste and swirl up any left over liquid to pitch into the beer.

If you dont have enough yeast than step it up again I.E. 8 oz to 2 quarts of water

side note: the reason do a step up starter at a lower than normal OG is I have found its easier on the already stressed yeast that is in a commercial beer. it takes more time but i think i get faster ferm starts and better behavior throughout when i step up.

 

[BigErn]

That sounds like a good plan to me... now when you say flame I assume you mean sanatize... I have a spray bottle of star san I use very liberaly when im doing anything.

But If you really do mean flame I could always use a new flamethrower :rockin:

 

[Justibone]

Use a lighter.

 

[BigErn]

Is it possible to do this without stepping it up. Has anyone else tried this? Would that put too much stress on the yeast? How would Oberon Yeast react to this?

 

[Runyanka]

Without stepping it up, the yeast will be over worked by the time you pitch it into the actual beer. I wouldn't take the chance, especially on commercially strained yeast.

 

[Justibone]

Is it possible to do this without stepping it up. Has anyone else tried this? Would that put too much stress on the yeast? How would Oberon Yeast react to this?

Well, if you pitched 1/10th volume, it *might* be okay. That is, in my opinion based on nothing but plucking it from my posterior nether regions, if you put 12 oz of beer with commercially stressed yeast into 108 oz of wort (for final volume of 120 oz, or just shy of a gallon), you might be okay.

My two 1/100ths of a lira (not even worth $.02).

I do have an experiment I'm going to run next week (after we go grocery shopping) in a 1 gallon batch where I'm going to do exactly that. There are more elements to the experiment, but basically it's going to be an even easier way to make beer than the "coffee maker on a medium sized oceangoing research vessel" method.

When I told SWMBO about the experiment, she made me SWEAR I would never serve that type of beer to her... so that's a good sign.

But I will be using Oberon for the yeast.

 

[BigErn]

Well I just bought all my supplies so Im going to grab a pack of oberon and step up the yeast count as you guys suggested. If I can harvest and wash enough I plan on keeping this yeast as my go too. Just beacuse I love Bells so much