I would love to use yeast for many generations but I only brew beers above 1.070. I once used a second generation yeast harvested from a 1.080 beer for use on another 1.080 beer and it didn't finish. I had to pitch a fresh pack. Is there any way to remedy this? I do have a vial of high gravity yeast. Can I harvest this with success?
Harvesting slurry for high gravity
- Thread starter zoomzilla
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My usual process:
Brew a session beer where you don't need a starter. Harvest from the yeast, and split it, brewing a new session beer and a high gravity beer. Once the second session beer is done, repeat again by harvesting from second session beer into another session beer and another high gravity beer. Continue ad nauseam. I like to go about 5 generations from the initial pitch. I don't go past that, rather I restart. But if you wanted to keep going you could.
Brew a session beer where you don't need a starter. Harvest from the yeast, and split it, brewing a new session beer and a high gravity beer. Once the second session beer is done, repeat again by harvesting from second session beer into another session beer and another high gravity beer. Continue ad nauseam. I like to go about 5 generations from the initial pitch. I don't go past that, rather I restart. But if you wanted to keep going you could.
Should work fine. The reason they recommend not doing it is because you increase the potential for mutation when making a high gravity beer. It the high gravity beer attenuated ok, you will have yeast that will attenuate similarly in the next beer.
