Maintaining Yeast Viability

[photobru]

Hi all, I would like to start slanting, but I don't have a pressure canner yet so for now I'm storing yeast in my fridge in sanitized mason jars and probably sterile test tubes soon. In order to keep the yeast healthy and viable I've began making starters with the yeast that's been in the fridge a while and then putting the fresh yeast back in the fridge.

My question is should I consider the yeast from the starters new generations as far as the number of times it can be used? I understand there is a rule of thumb something like not to reuse yeast more than 6 times, so would the starters count towards that total?

 

[ColoHox]

Numbers of generations are thrown around a lot. There are really just so many "it depends" factors.

For the sake of consistency, I would call a pass through a starter as a generation. In my yeast farming, any time the yeast has to ferment something, I call it a generation. Because some of my generations are maintenance starters (kind of like you are describing), and not really full fermentations of (usually) hopped and/or strong beer, I can get way more than 6 generations.

The number of generations you get for a particular culture will depend on how you use it. I have a culture of denny's favorite that I used for 13 generations before it started to do odd things. Which is partially because the yeast had (probably) mutated a bit, and because of my harvesting and selection process.

Keep consistent records of your stocks and compare them with the fermentation performance.

 

[LLBeanJ]

I take the opposite point of view. I don't consider a starter fermentation to be a new generation.

 

[ColoHox]

I take the opposite point of view. I don't consider a starter fermentation to be a new generation.

There you go, two approaches. Just pick one counting method and do it the same for everything.

 

[frankktankk]

A starter in perfect conditions (impossible at home?) would be adding 0 generations and a normal brew 1 generation.
A standard starter with stirplate is between 0 and 1 depending on many factors (temp, nutrients, fraction of different sugars, etc).
I'd say 0.5 in my yeastlab (kitchen).

 

[photobru]

Ok, I guess I'll just have to keep good notes and figure out some way to differentiate starter generations from brew generations, since there seems to be a consensus that even if you decide to count the starters they aren't exactly the same. Thanks!

 

[hottpeper13]

I do a starter from a new vile and save some( 8-12 oz jelly jar) for making another starter. I then pitch that as gen1, each repitch of rinsed yeast is another gen. When that yeast is at 4-6 gen I rinse it real well one last time and make bread with it. I have ~4 varieties to choose from and just revived a 410 from Aug 14. As long as it behaves the same and smells good I pitch it. I once saved a 1945 NEO that didn't floc the same and I pitched it anyway and that batch never cleared and tasted yeasty thru the 12 grueling weeks it took to drink all the time in the fridge and the last one still cloudy. Lesson learned. Oh and the next time you make a starter it is gen2 and so on.