Harvesting from a bottle

[Dale Owen]

I've harvested some yeast from a bottle. I took it from a farmhouse ale I liked. The label says the brewery isolated the yeast from a 17th century piece of furniture. Anyway, I have the yeast working on a Fast Pitch wort, about 1 liter. It was slow to get started. Its been chugging along for about a week. So, at what point am I just making a small batch of extract beer? At what point have I revived the yeast and how do I store it for another day?

 

[couchsending]

What brewery? Any idea if they bottle condition with a different yeast?

 

[Dale Owen]

The beer is Relic. Brewed by Draai Laag. They have since changed their name to Strange Roots. I contacted them and they said the yeast in the bottle is the yeast they brewed with. From the smell of what I've got going, I'm pretty certain its the same.

 

[IslandLizard]

Did you use the yeast from one bottle in a liter of FP starter wort? Did you dilute the FP 1:1?

That's a steep uphill battle for that little bit of yeast. She must be feisty!

She'd have a much better chance and be a lot healthier when building up gradually with step starters.
Start with say 50-200ml of 1.010 wort, depending on her condition, for her to start fermenting. Then move on to 250-500ml of 1.020, and finally to 0.5-1 liter of 1.040.
Once you got that you can start building her up with 2 liters starters of 1.040 for batch pitches.

Use a yeast calculator to estimate how many cells you need for a small batch.
I most often use:
BrewUnited's Yeast Calculator
Mr. Malty

At least you now know you're culturing the original yeast, not some generic bottling yeast.

 

[Dale Owen]

I did dilute 1:1. I started slow. 200 ml of wort at first and stepped it up every couple of days. Not much activity for the first few days. On the 5th day things started happening. For a minute I thought I had an infection or a wild yeast. Then whatever was growing on top settled in. Now just a steady, what looks to be carbonation, going on.

 

[IslandLizard]

I did dilute 1:1. I started slow. 200 ml of wort at first and stepped it up every couple of days. Not much activity for the first few days. On the 5th day things started happening. For a minute I thought I had an infection or a wild yeast. Then whatever was growing on top settled in. Now just a steady, what looks to be carbonation, going on.

There's always the risk of an intruder taking over before your prized yeast gets a chance. That's the main reason for easing her in with less and lower gravity wort so she can establish herself easier. Many yeast dreg harvesters therefore flame the lip of the bottle and add the small, low gravity volume of (sterile) starter wort directly to the bottle, so she should be the only one in there. They transfer the culture later when she's done with that first or second step.

Looks like you've got a live one. Hopefully the one you're after. Keep building her, only one microorganism prevails in the end.

 

[Dale Owen]

Thanks for the link and advice. Excited about this! Planning on stepping up my game from extract to BIAB. Hopefully the combination of harvesting yeast and BIAB for the first time isn't toomuch. Then again, you can't learn until you get in over your head and figure out how to swim.

 

[IslandLizard]

Thanks for the link and advice. Excited about this! Planning on stepping up my game from extract to BIAB. Hopefully the combination of harvesting yeast and BIAB for the first time isn't toomuch. Then again, you can't learn until you get in over your head and figure out how to swim.

They're independent processes. Work on the yeast first. Make sure you have enough for a pitch plus some left over to make a new starter from for a future batch, so you start out with 25-100 billion cells, not just 1 billion (at best) from a bottle.

Just familiarize yourself with the BIAB mashing process before committing. After you hoist the bag it's no different than an extract brew, just more wort.

It really should be called MIAB (Mash in a Bag) or better, SVB (Single Vessel Brewing). A finely milled grist, not your average run of the mill coarse LHBS/online order crush, helps with speedy conversion and high extraction efficiency. If you don't have your own mill (yet), at least double mill an average (coarse) grist. The mesh bag is your (fine) filter.

A smallish (pour over or dunk) sparge can help rinse out some sugars that are trapped in the grain, but many BIAB brewers don't bother, not finding a significant gain.

 

[IslandLizard]

Before I forget, after the yeast settles out, and you decant, taste some of that starter beer. Just to make sure your yeast is indeed palatable and what you're after. It will be weak and oxidized, but enough to decide she's a go.

 

[MyQuL]

Yeast from a 17th century piece of furniture. Wow. Interesting. I'm currently doing the final step up from a bottle of beer which was brew by Gales brewery to celebrate the1977 (UK) Queen's silver jubilee

 

[IslandLizard]

Yeast from a 17th century piece of furniture. Wow. Interesting. I'm currently doing the final step up from a bottle of beer which was brew by Gales brewery to celebrate the1977 (UK) Queen's silver jubilee

Wow, 42 years old dregs...

 

[MyQuL]

Wow, 42 years old dregs...

Almost as old as I am. Cool isnt it. I won 9 bottles of Silver Jubilee ale on ebay.Ale different breweries. The first one I tried, Courage, had a sour taste in the final step up so I assumed it had got infected. So I chucked it. This Gales one is really vigorous during all the step ups, much more so than the Courage dregs. The spent starter wort tastes fine (really fruity), so I've got high hopes for the yeast

 

[cyberbackpacker]

@MyQuL if you are stateside I would be very interested in getting some of that Gales... if you have any to culture, I'm really looking for some yeast from Bass!

 

[MyQuL]

@MyQuL if you are stateside I would be very interested in getting some of that Gales... if you have any to culture, I'm really looking for some yeast from Bass!

Im in the UK. I dont know anywhere you can get Bass apart from maybe Brewlab.

 

[cyberbackpacker]

Im in the UK. I dont know anywhere you can get Bass apart from maybe Brewlab.

Yeah, I assumed you were UK based, but I thought it was worth asking! As for Brewlab, they've really limited their release of strains to homebrewers, so that is not an option at the moment unfortunately.

 

[MyQuL]

Yeah, I assumed you were UK based, but I thought it was worth asking! As for Brewlab, they've really limited their release of strains to homebrewers, so that is not an option at the moment unfortunately.

I had noted that brewlabs only seem to supply there slopes through their "retail partner" rather than directly as they previously did.
You can buy Bass beer easily enough from the supermarket here in the UK but it's filtered so that's not an option for getting hold of the strain. The only other option I can think of is similarly to the way I got the Gales yeast buy finding an old bottle of Bass on ebay and having a go a culturing it up.