Ideas to save on yeast...

[h4rdluck]

In variation to the wonderfully famous yeast washing thread with pics I was curious if I could actually farm some yeast a little easier?

Basically still boil the mason jars to sterilize them, but then go ahead and buy 2-3 vials of white labs different strains. Basically make a very large starter out of them 1-2 liters, then divide that starter up into smaller say 1 quart jars or less, and then stick them in the fridge, and when the time came make further starters out of each of those?

I'm all about getting my costs down as much as possible. Right now I am washing yeast, sometimes just pitching onto the yeast cake, sometimes if I'm lazy I just funnel the yeast cake into a sanitized beer bottle and cap it for ~ 2 weeks in the fridge and eventually just pitch it straight out of the bottle. Its been working great, but I do occaisonally get worried about the trub and possible infection ect ect.

IT seems like I could do all the work up front and have a very fresh batch of yeast to work with too and stretch my 7$ down to say even 1.25-2$ a batch.

 

[Scut_Monkey]

I think your idea would work fine as long as you use it within the timeframe that it's healthy and with some slight modifications. By "1-2 liter starters" I'm assuming that you will be using a stir plate. Otherwise you will not be getting the cell numbers that you may be thinking.

However, even if cultured on a stir plate, to properly ferment you would need larger than 1/3 of a liter of a starter. You could easily pitch your 1/3 liter into a liter of fresh wort the night before you brew and you would have a great starter for a moderate gravity beer. Plus this would help to prove yeast viability to you before you pitch it. If you did this you could even break your original 1 liter starter up into even more aliqouts for even more brewing. This would obviously lower your costs that much more.

 

[Edcculus]

That would work. If you think about it, washing really saves a lot of yeast. Say you get 3 jars of yeast. On your next beer, you would make a starter from one and pitch. If you washed that yeast, you would get 3 more. If you weren't going past the second generation, you would still get about 12 batches from one vial. Even more if you went subsequent generations.

With your idea, it might be a better idea to make slants out of the strains. Then, you can always propogate a starter from part of the slant. If stored right, you could get a LOT of batches out of one vial/pack without even having to wash.

 

[Scut_Monkey]

With your idea, it might be a better idea to make slants out of the strains. Then, you can always propogate a starter from part of the slant. If stored right, you could get a LOT of batches out of one vial/pack without even having to wash.

You could also consider storing yeast in sterile distilled water which is what I currently do. From what I have read it provides a longer storage time for the yeast compared to slants and is less labor intensive as you don't have to reculture as the yeast are viable for a year or more. The other great thing is you can store them at room temp and not in the fridge/freezer. I'm looking at a vial of wyeast 3068 sitting on my computer desk right now.

 

[IXVolt]

Isn't that essentially what larger breweries do? Keep culturing a yeast strain and use it over and over...??

 

[Scut_Monkey]

Isn't that essentially what larger breweries do? Keep culturing a yeast strain and use it over and over...??

I believe that most breweries do this. You do have to be careful because yeast do mutate and you may end up with a completely different strain if you keep reculturing and reculturing the same yeast. The typical rule of thumb is to only use it if it is less than 5 generations old. In other words you can use it 5 times. However, if you split up the original vial of yeast into say 3 seperate vials you could then use each seperate vial for 5 fermentations. You get the idea.