Baker's yeast to fermentation

[zaptop]

Hello guys!

How good is bakers yeast for fermentation? I can understand that it's not any good for beer brewing, but what for cider?

The reason why I am curious about bakers yeast is that I can't by any brewery yeast nearby!

Kind Regards

 

[zaptop]

Sorry, should be "Baker's yeast for fermentation"

English is not my native language

 

[zaptop]

Anyone?

 

[afro_lou]

Probably not a great idea... Can you buy a bottle of bottle conditioned beer/cider in a similar style to what you're brewing? You could then at least try to propagate some actual brewing yeast.

 

[zaptop]

Probably not a great idea... Can you buy a bottle of bottle conditioned beer/cider in a similar style to what you're brewing? You could then at least try to propagate some actual brewing yeast.

I suppose I could! Is it easy to do? Can I make a "yeast colony" (whatever its called) of it? Because that would help me alot!

 

[badlee]

Bakers yeast will make a drinkable cider.
No great
But you will have cider

 

[zaptop]

Bakers yeast will make a drinkable cider.
No great
But you will have cider

Ahh okay! Thanks

 

[Qhrumphf]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=49106

I've never made it, and it's a mead, but it does explicitly call for bread yeast, and it's supposed to work well.

Like these guys said, in most cases while bread yeast will ferment, it will not make an ideal product.

Also, if your location is correct, there's allegedly a homebrew shop in Gothenburg: http://potbelly.se/. They should have yeast. Carry White Labs according to their website.

 

[zaptop]

Also, if your location is correct, there's allegedly a homebrew shop in Gothenburg: http://potbelly.se/. They should have yeast. Carry White Labs according to their website.

Thanks for the information man, appreciate it!
Yeah I know about that store, but it's a 1.5h drive from where I live, gothenburg is the largest town around

That shop got really good stuff!

 

[Qhrumphf]

Thanks for the information man, appreciate it!
Yeah I know about that store, but it's a 1.5h drive from where I live, gothenburg is the largest town around

That shop got really good stuff!

Many homebrew suppliers will ship, even small local shops if you live semi-nearby. I don't speak Swedish and half of that store's site is not in English so I don't know if they do or not, but that's something to look into.

 

[zaptop]

Many homebrew suppliers will ship, even small local shops if you live semi-nearby. I don't speak Swedish and half of that store's site is not in English so I don't know if they do or not, but that's something to look into.

He doesn't ship anything
You have to order and then fetch it in the store

 

[thekraken]

You could make the trip and pick up a vial of yeast to get you started. Thereafter you could try and maintain a constant supply of said yeast.
So
step 1) buy a liquid yeast.
step 2) make a starter, overbuild your cell count by 100 billion cells
step 3) remove extra portion of starter to jar and save for next batch
step 4) brew with remaining starter

Repeat steps 2 through 4... more or less

If you're able to do this, you could certainly harvest yeast from bottle conditioned brews too. Google/research "harvesting yeast", "yeast banking", etc.

http://brulosophy.com/methods/yeast-harvesting/

 

[Qhrumphf]

He doesn't ship anything
You have to order and then fetch it in the store

Well there goes that idea.

I would suggest purchasing your ingredients in bulk and buying in person. Go as often as you need/can manage. But I'd make the trek instead of using a subpar ingredient like bread yeast. If I were in your shoes and it were an hour and a half instead of 10 mins to my LHBS, I'd probably save up, go in there 3-4 times per year, but buy several hundred pounds of malt, however many pounds of hops, and multiple packs of yeast at the same time. And then, like suggested above, focus on repitching yeast (whether harvesting from oversized starters, or harvesting directly fermenters, I tend to do the latter personally).

 

[worlddivides]

Even if that home brew shop in Gothenberg doesn't ship yeast, I would imagine that bigger stores headquartered in somewhere like Stockholm might. For example, White Labs has this Scandinavia inquiry page where you could ask if they ship yeast themselves or if there are distributor/stores in Sweden that they know of that do ship their yeast:
http://www.whitelabs.com/international-inquiries-scandinavia-europe
(although it does look like it's geared more towards businesses than homebrewers, I don't think sending them a question could hurt)

Worst case scenario, I would suggest what others have suggested and just go to the home brew store in Gothenberg and stock up on some yeast to store in your refrigerator.

 

[zaptop]

I really want to make a yeast bank! How well does it stay in the fridge?

 

[Qhrumphf]

If you have a pressure cooker to sterilize the equipment, and your sanitation otherwise is top notch, yeast will stay in the fridge for a very long time. However, the viability will degrade over time, and eventually you'd have to coax the yeast population back up. It will keep longer in the freezer, however to do that you'll have to make special procedures (like a glycerin solution) to keep the cold from actually killing the yeast (if you just freeze regular yeast or yeast slurry, crystals form that will shred the cell walls and kill it all). I've never done that, so I can't get specific, but there are books on it. And then if you have the ability, if you can use a deep freezer, you can keep a mother colony of yeast all but indefinitely, but that may not be practical for a homebrewer, and rather is for a commercial brewery using a yeast not commercially available (their own house yeast) so that they can plate out and regrow from basically single cells from the mother colony so that they don't need to worry about mutations over time from constant repitching. If you want to go that route, by all means do it, but probably overkill for a non-commercial application.

 

[zaptop]

Ahh, I see. Seems a bit too much for a rookie home brewer. What about the yeast in the bottom of the bottles of previous brews? Are they of use?

 

[Qhrumphf]

Absolutely. Here's a good guide on using the yeast from the bottom of the fermenter: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=41768

And then there's plain old top-cropping, where instead of waiting for fermentation to end, about 24 hours after pitching, you skim off the top layer of kräusen (hop matter, and protein), and then 12-24 hours later (I usually see 24, total of 48 hours after pitching, but I usually go 12 and it works just fine) you can then skim off fresh healthy yeast from the top. This is the healthiest yeast possible, and is akin to pitching a starter at high kräusen. Some folks like to store this yeast for later, but I time my brews such that I can pitch directly from the kräusen of one batch into a new batch (or two) of wort, estimating the amount I need for the pitching rate that I want.

I'll do either, or, as warranted by my brew schedule, and by the yeast. All yeasts can be bottom cropped after fermentation. Only some yeast strains are good top-cropping yeast (primarily Hefeweizen strains and many English strains, but some others too).

There's a method here that I personally know folks use with great success, similar to top cropping, and along the lines of a "Burton Union" (old English fermentation system): https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=275114. Basically fill the fermenter almost to the brim instead of leaving headspace. Set up a blowoff into a sterile sealed jar with an airlock, and let all the blowoff go in there. Discard the first stuff (again the protein matter) and then save all the yeast.

 

[zaptop]

Wow!

I feel like I'm too much of a beginner to start doing that!

I just found a store which can deliver anything with a decent price!

 

[guidz]

I order my yeast from http://shop.humle.se/
They have good stock and ship fast

 

[badlee]

Www.themaltmiller.co.uk
Good prices,cheap international postage and good team.
I used to buy from them a lot