Can I harvest yeast from a commercial beer that was force carbonated?

[gkeusch]

I was just looking at the thread "Commercial Beer Yeast Harvest List" and someone said that as long as the beer was not filtered or pasteurized it did not need to be bottle conditioned in order to harvest yeast. Is that right? Everything I see about the topic starts with the assumption that you have a bottle conditioned beer.

I currently make slants from cultures and grow starters form them so I am familiar with the process, but I am intrigued about harvesting. Is there maybe a post on here about how to do it, or could it be as simple as using a small sample of the beer in a small starter wort and go from there?

 

[LLBeanJ]

... or could it be as simple as using a small sample of the beer in a small starter wort and go from there?

Yes, it actually is this simple.

 

[gkeusch]

I'll be darned...thanks.
I feel better buying that six pack of Bell's knowing that I can harvest the bottle and the yeast!

 

[JonM]

I have great success pouring the dregs of one bottle of Bell's into 150 ml of 1.040 wort in a 250 ml erlenmeyer, then letting it spin on the stir plate for 36 hours. From there, step up to 1L and you've got plenty for most 5 gal ale batches.

 

[JonM]

One more thing: Check the bottling date on the back of the Bell's labels. Get the freshest stuff you can.

 

[Hopper5000]

yes it's that easy! One thing to be wary of that I am aware of is that some breweries use a different yeast to bottle vs what they ferment with. This is usually done on proprietary strains and I have heard of it being more common with Belgian beers