harvesting bottle dregs. Is this yeast or other trub?

[sowoah]

So in the Mason Jar is 7 oz of Hoegaarden trub, collected from 6 bottles. You can see in the first picture immediately after filling the Jar compared to the color and clarity of the last pour. I put the jar in the fridge, planning to cold crash overnight and get my starter going today (I need the starter in 1 week and am planning 3 steps, so time is of the essence)

My plan was/is to decant most of the remaining beer so that I can start with a small (~100-200 mL) starter and step up. Adding wort to this much beer would start me with about 400+ mL which I have come to understand is not ideal for such little and stressed yeast.

After an hour I could see a very small sediment layer on the bottom. At 9 hours there is a pretty decent layer considering this is from 6 commercial bottles. It's dark but I expect the viability to be low which would give the yeast a darker color, right? However the beer is still quite dark and cloudy compared to the pint glass, and my concern is that this is may be mostly non-yeast trub and that if I decant I will loose a large percentage of my yeast.

I'm looking for someone with experience in this to help me decide on the best option:

1. It's a yeast cake. After 9-12 hours you have most of the yeast. Decant and make the starter now
2. It's trub. Much of the yeast is still in suspension. Make a 400mL Starter with 200ml beer + 200ml 1.04 wort. A week is too short to crash longer
3. It's trub but decanting the beer or having a small starter is too important to advise step 2 (even though you only have a week to make a 3 step starter)

Thanks for any advice/feedback

 

[wilserbrewer]

There is yeast both at the bottom and in the beer. I would pitch the whole shebang in a starter solution. Next time I would avoid excessive handling of the culture. I would decant the bottles and have starter wort ready, pitch directly from the bottles to the starter wort. If you need a few hours / overnight, I would just leave the yeast in the bottle covered w/ 1/4 inch of the remaining beer, sanitize the bottle top and cover w cap or foil.

The minimum amount of handling the cleaner IMO. You could make the starter wort higher gravity so adding it to the mixture you have now will be proper starter gravity and keep the volume to a minimum.

I have done this a couple times, what I did was just pour the beer out of 3 bottles leaving the dregs, about a 1/4", then I added about two ounces starter wort to each bottle, after about 4-5 days I dumped those bottles into a larger starter in a jar, then stepped that up to a gallon jug.

I think you could likely proceed either way here, either cold crashing what you have, or using the entire volume. Sorry to be vague....

ps next time try to capture the dregs with less of the beer...you left over an ounce in each bottle, guessing less than a half ounce would be ideal to pitch directly to a starter.

I would be concerned that just using the flocced portion, you are selecting the dead and more floculant portion of the culture....idk good luck

 

[WoodlandBrew]

Less handling is almost always better when dealing with low viability cultures. If I'm going straight from the bottle I actually do the first two steps in the bottle. Although, every time I have looked at bottle dregs under the microscope I have seen bacteria along with it, so I normally start by plating and selecting a few single colonies.

But to your question, yeast should floc out pretty quick, especially in the fridge. At 9 hours its hard to say what you are looking at, but I would work from what has settled out. Ideally plate what has settled to the bottom and build up from a single cell. S. cerevisaie doubles every 2-3 hours, so you should be able to build a pitch from a single cell in a week.

 

[sowoah]

While I appreciate your concept WoodlandBrew, and understand what you are saying, I think it's impractical for most people to isolate a single cell and build up to a few hundred billion outside of a lab setting. I don't know why you advise people to do this (I had already found and read your article on this previously). I'm sure a number of people without proper equipment/techniques/clean setting would wind up worse off. It's quite contradictory to say "less handling is better" and then recommend plating and selecting single cells/colonies.

Thank you both for the advice. I wound pouring almost all of it in and starting directly in my flask (since the 100ml of dregs and 100ml of wort would be maxing out the jar). I'll plan on something like this:

day 1: intial starter 100ml dregs + 100ml 1.04 wort
day 3: + 500ml 1.04 wort
day 4: cold crash
day 5: decant, +1500ml 1.04 wort
day 7: cold crash
day 8: decant, pitch

 

[WoodlandBrew]

I appreciate your honesty and think i understand where you are coming from.

In some bottle dregs I've seen as much as one bacteria cell for every 10 yeast cells. Plating to grow a colony from a single cell is actually quite simple, and I've done it in my basement using Tupperware. It seems to me that its a misconception that single cell techniques are difficult or that you need a clean room for good results. Honestly I think it's something that is achievable by most homebrewers and will provide better results.