Harvesting Hefeweizen/Weissbier yeast

[olstones]

Hi guys,

I want to make a Hefeweizen soon and was thinking it would be neat to harvest yeast from a german bottle, Weihenstephaner ideally but am open to others. After some reading it appears that while fermentation uses ale yeast strains breweries actually add lager yeast for bottle conditioning, obviously not what I want.

Anybody know any brands where that is not the case? Good wheat beer yeast candidates to harvest?

Thanks

 

[BigPerm]

Hi guys,

I want to make a Hefeweizen soon and was thinking it would be neat to harvest yeast from a german bottle, Weihenstephaner ideally but am open to others. After some reading it appears that while fermentation uses ale yeast strains breweries actually add lager yeast for bottle conditioning, obviously not what I want.

Anybody know any brands where that is not the case? Good wheat beer yeast candidates to harvest?

Thanks

Most of the commercially-available strains have origins from traditional german breweries. If it were me, I would use Wyeast 3068 and save your harvesting experiments for something truly unique. This way, you'll be sure to avoid the problem of potentially co-propagating a bottling strain and ending up with a beer thats not quite what you were looking for.

Good luck!

 

[olstones]

Thanks, that makes sense. I will save the harvesting for the next one...maybe an IPA with sierra nevada yeast!

 

[rhys333]

Bottle harvesting is fun though. I recently did it with a saison from Quebec, and it worked fabulously. I wouldn't hesitate to give it a try as long as you can ensure good sanitation. Schneider Weisse is bottled with the primary strain and I know others have had success harvesting it. I plan to give it a try next time I do a dunkelweizen.

 

[BigPerm]

I wasn't trying to discourage him, I would just rather do it with something that isn't available in pure form. I have 3 1-gal batches now going with cultured harvested from 3 commercial saisons with interesting characters (prairie, funkwerks, hill farmstead). It's lots of fun, just wouldn't be my preference to risk it with something I can buy anyway.

 

[rhys333]

My harvested saison strain is reportedly French Saison, but it comes with a uniqueness from that particular brewery. I hear similar stories about Schneider. I enjoy the process of harvesting, plus I get a few nice commercial beers out of it that I wouldn't have by buying a pack.