Culturing yeast from a bottle

[Merleti]

I know some say you cannot use some yeast from a bottle to culture that brewers yeast. I have read that you could with Chimay. I gave it a try and I did'nt see a drop in gravity, but I did have a fare amount of precipitant after a couple of days. Here is what I did.
I collected yeast from a Chimay Blue 750mL bottle. I shook the last 6oz and put it in a mason jar. Then placed it in the refrigerator. Three days later I made a starter wort of 1/2 cut to 500mL of water with the traditional 15 min boil. I also added 1/32 of a tsp. of White Labs WLN-1000 Yeast Nutrient. Placed it in my fermentation chamber at 68deg. on a stir plate. 24 hr later I stepped it up with 1000mL of wort 1/32 of a tsp of Yeast nutrient with the same 15 min boil regiment. 24 hrs later I checked it and noticed the high amount of precipitant on the bottom. I'm not sure if the precipitant was from the first 500mL or the 1000mL or both. Any thoughts on what may have gone wrong or did I not wait long enough to build up enough yeast to drop the gravity? Thank you for your responses in advance.

 

[porterpounder]

The precipitant is likely trub/break material. If there is not gravity drop, you have no yeast activity. Make sure the bottle is a fresh as possible and if you can, use the dregs from a few bottles.

 

[Riot]

Two thoughts. When looking for yeast from a brewery that does multiple beers with the same strain, harvest from the lowest ABV sample you can find, Chimay Red in this case. Secondly, you are more likely to be successful starting with a smaller first step to minimise stress on the culture. I usually use 30-50ml at ≈1.030 to wake the yeast up before trying to actually grow cells. Last thought, why did you leave it for several days before its first feeding? You want the yeast to get active and take over the wort quickly, not to sit around waiting for food.

Edit: Guess that became three thoughts, oh well

 

[podz]

And next thought:

The yeast used for priming is most probably not the same strain as used for fermentation.

 

[Riot]

Its actually pretty rare for most breweries to bottle with secondary strains. The Trappist breweries definitely do not, unless you count Orval adding Brett to carbonate.

 

[Merleti]

Thank you all for your response.
Riot I put it back in the refrigerator because the schedule of making the starter before brew day was a few days away. It was already cold so I thought it would be fine to place it back. Looks like I just need to stick with the vials and packs for now.

 

[Riot]

It probably would have been fine being stored but I feel like it increases the infection possibility while the yeast is dormant and weak. The way I bottle culture takes almost a week if its getting decanted before pitching. So there's really no such thing as starting to early, and there's absolutely no harm in leaving the final step in the fridge for a couple weeks once its finished. I'm sure you can do this if you choose to, but it is definitely a fair amount of planning and babying the culture.

 

[Calder]

I've grown many yeasts from commercials. The only one I've had a problem with was Chimay Blue. Dregs from 2 small bottles.

I'm a little confused when you say 6 ozs. Was that beer in the bottle? If so, seems like a lot.

 

[jahdub]

I can't speak for the quality of yeast harvested from chimay, but with regard to your technique, there are a few issues.

- You don't need to leave 6oz of beer in the bottle, if your beer has been chilling in the fridge for a day or two, you can save the last half inch to inch of beer to make a starter from. Most of the yeast will be in the bottom of the bottle, so you can enjoy more of your $10 beer.

- I assume your starter was 1/2 cup of DME to 500mL of starter. For propogating from dregs, you're starting with too much volume and too high of a gravity. You should aim for around 100mL of 1.020-1.025 starter. Something that'll be easy for your yeast to ferment and get the cell count up. Then you can step the volume to 500mL, but 1/2cup DME in 500mL should be about 1.060 I believe, still too much. 3/8cup or 50g/500mL is what you should shoot for.

- When growing your starter, there is nothing to gain from keeping at down at 68F. Yeast will grow faster at 70-75 degrees.

 

[rellty]

I haven't bought yeast in 2 years. Make sure you leave your bottles of beer you'd like to extract yeast from in the fridge for a day, so it all settles to the bottom. I make a normal starter 100 ml water to 10 ml of dme,use this formula to make an 800 ml starter. once it cools. Flame the lip, or spray star san, open, and carefully pour the beverage into your glass leaving about a 1/4" on the bottom, swirl it up pour it into your starter. I usually use a six packs worth. Put it on the stir plate. You won't notice any activity. After 2 days I make 800 more ml, and pour it in. Then you notice some krausen marks around the top the day after, you know it's good. Probably not the way most people do it, but you can't argue with success. I'm actually harvesting some yeast right now. Ha

 

[rellty]

Can't use any beer though, make sure it's fresh. Local breweries is all I use

 

[JPourciau]

I actually am in the process of trying to culture yeast from Spencer Trappist. I definitely made some mistakes, but it may yet work out. I started with around 3/4 lb of DME boiled in 1 gallon. OG 1.056. (Too high, I know...) As I drank them, I added the dregs from three bottles into my gallon fermenter. For about the first week, I saw no activity. I did check gravity, and it had dropped a few points. Lo and behold, last night I looked at the fermenter again and the airlock was bubbling away! We shall see... My plan is too cold crash it after it finishes and decant the liquid off, leaving the slurry to pitch into a batch. Perhaps a little bit of a gamble, but I have high hopes.

I assume in the future, I should plan on much smaller volume and less gravity?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Zepth]

I successfully harvested from a belgian wit with no clue as to where to start. Had some DME and about 600ml, I think around 1.040. Took about 3 days to start showing activity. As soon as it was active I stepped it up to about 1200ml of 1.050. Pitched it into a simple 50/50 pale/wheat a few days later and fermentation kicked off within hours. I was recently given a bottle of westveletaran (sp?) quad(?) and plan to harvest the dregs for direct-from-monastary yeast. Wish me well when embarking on that endeavour.

Turns out I don't really like belgian wit. And yes, it did end up quite similar to the original bottle that I wasn't terribly fond of. Experimentation and experiences. That's beyond the scope of this thread. Good times, no regrets.