Mead from harvested beer yeast

[DanCardin]

Hello!

A couple of days ago, I was kegging an ale and decided to harvest some yeast. I've got roughly half of a mason jar, it was SafAle US-05, and if it matters the beer was fruited with blueberries during the fermentation.

Having never done mead before, I was wondering if this would be at all worthwhile to use to make mead. If so, worth using some DME to make a starter or just pitch it? Any other considerations, etc

 

[Seamonkey84]

any yeast will work, just depending if the esters are what your looking for. Starters for mead aren’t necessarily, but wouldn’t hurt. I if you make a starter, no DME, just use some honey and pitch the whole thing into the batch.

 

[bernardsmith]

any yeast will work, just depending if the esters are what your looking for. Starters for mead aren’t necessarily, but wouldn’t hurt. I if you make a starter, no DME, just use some honey and pitch the whole thing into the batch.

Curious why you would suggest not using DME to make a starter? You don't treat the starter as if this is a drinkable wine or beer. The focus of the starter is to grow the yeast colony and so presumably any sugar source that is suitably nutrient rich (and wort is far more nutrient rich than honey) - and presumably if the starter is oxygen rich the amount of alcohol in it will be relatively small , the yeast presumably spending their time and energy budding. No? Which is not to suggest that one would need a starter if the colony was both viable enough and large enough to happily ferment the honey in the volume of must it was asked to ferment.

 

[DanCardin]

I don't necessarily know if I need a starter, I just dont want to end up in the situation where I did something stupid, killed my harvested yeast, and pitch a slurry of garbage .

For what it's worth How to Make Mead at Home (no idea whether this is current advice) suggests DME for a starter

 

[Seamonkey84]

I follow loveofroses protocol for the BOMM, and I’ve also heard it from Ricky the mead maker. A traditional mead with nutrients (and lower starting gravity) is great to reuse lees from, as it’s flavor neutral and the yeast is already use to honey. Why add another step of using dme, just to cold crash and pitch, just make a smaller mead and pitch it into a bigger one. Recipe for starter in this is what I use. Denard Brewing
I’ve kept the yeast from one pack going for 6-8 months, using it for several different meads/wines. I just kept refilling my starter vessel after pitching most of it into a batch. It kind of became a pet colony, sort of like people with their sourdough starters.

 

[Jimenie]

Hello folks, pretty coincidental, but I actually stumbled upon this forum for this exact same question

Just pitched my very first JAOM on Tuesday and yesterday a friend of a friend who owns a microbrewery contacted me if I wanted to try a mead with the leftover yeast and worth from a tank he just finished.
So now I have a 33ml bottle full of the stuff sitting in the fridge. The day before I use it (Monday or Tuesday) I'll revive it in some lukewarm water with some honey (correct me if this is my first rookie mistake ), but what do I do then?

For a gallon of mead, how much of the stuff do I pitch in there? Or doesn't that matter that much and might I just end up with a bottle that finishes fermenting quicker?
Does worth contain a lot of nutrients as is? Or so I still need to add extras (don't have any yet, and stuff like Fermaid K and DAP seems to be hard to find in Belgium...)

Thanks in advance!

 

[Seamonkey84]

While it’s still cold, pour out any of the clear beer that it’s sitting in. Let it warm up to room temp, Then add your honey water to wake it up. Yes you should add some more nutrients for the yeast, but if you can’t get any of the nutrients mentioned, getting a bit of baking yeast and add it to some boiling water. Then use that “yeast soup” as part of your mix for the batch.

 

[Jimenie]

Thanks for the reply! I found some probable European replacements for the nutrients used in most recipes, that should arrive somewhere this week (might post their fact sheets in another post, so more knowledgeable people can have a look how they compare to Fermaid etc). As soon as it does, I'll get to work on reviving the beer yeast. Undisturbed it should be fine sitting in the fridge for another few day I think?

 

[DanCardin]

I ended up leaving mine for pretty much exactly 2 weeks, then followed Seamonkey84's advice about the starter.

So far so good, by my estimates, it's at about 7% of 12% 5 days in, with no obvious (to me) off smells/flavors.