'borrowing' commercial yeast

[Unferth]

Unibroue famously uses traditional secondary fermentation in bottles and they leave the lees at the bottom of all the bottles.

Do you think, in my thus far failed attempts to clone their Trois Pistoles, I could maybe borrow their yeast from the bottle, make a starter and pitch the exact yeast they brew with?

Problems I see are:

1) could be pasteurized... grr.
2) could be a different yeast they bottle carb than the one they brew with.

Any thoughts?

 

[kevin476]

IDK but you should send them an email and ask.

 

[CastleHollow]

If you can get Wyeast 3864, it's Unibroue's strain. Otherwise, harvesting from their bottles is a good way to go.

 

[TrickyDick]

Is that the limited edition from a few years back through wyeast can/Belgian? I think I bought a kit and never brewed it, which came with that yeast if so. Still have the yeast.

 

[Matt3989]

Nope, people do it all the time. I'm currently stepping up a yeast from great divide's Collette.

Sometimes breweries do use a different strain to carbonate, but I don't think very often... More so in stronger beers.

Start with a very small starter, I pitched the dregs of 3 bottles onto a 250ml 1.020 starter. No stir plate for the first step, just let it suit for a few days. (don't drink from the bottles, open them, pour them into a glass, leaving as much of the yeast and a little beer in the bottle as possible, then dump that into you're starter)

After a couple days you should have enough yeast on the bottom to pour of the fermented wort and add new 1.040 wort.

 

[Revvy]

There's tons of threads on it, including a thread of lists of which yeasts folks have been successful at. We call it harvesting. You might want to look at some of these threads.

 

[Unferth]

There's tons of threads on it, including a thread of lists of which yeasts folks have been successful at. We call it harvesting. You might want to look at some of these threads.

Thanks Rev, and all others as well. Good information here.

CastleHollow: If you don't mind my prying, how do you know that's the yeast they use? did you ask them?

 

[CastleHollow]

CastleHollow: If you don't mind my prying, how do you know that's the yeast they use? did you ask them?

From Wyeast:

http://www.wyeastlab.com/rw_yeaststrain_detail.cfm?ID=67

More information elsewhere, including HBT and here