pfooti
Well-Known Member
I'm getting four activator packs of Pacman in the mail the first week of January (I was going to order some right away, but I luckily remembered that I'll be away from my home for half of December, so it is best to wait a bit).
What I would like to do is grow one up into a fairly large slurry, split the slurry, and store it in the moderate to long term- something like 6 to 12 months. This is in part an exercise in learning yeast techniques and in part a practical thing: I'm told pacman is great for IPAs and Ambers, which I tend to brew 75% of the time, so having a good supply of this yeast is excellent.
My strategy is basically following a lot of what I've read on this forum and elsewhere. Step up from the activator to a 1L to a 4L wort slurry, I use stone aeration for that. The problem comes at storage time- between reading here, books, and listening to the brewstrong podcast, I've gotten a lot of conflicting information about best practices.
One thing mentioned on the BS Podcast (heh) was possibly using a considerably higher than 15% glycerin solution and just sticking it in a normal freezer- this will never actually freeze, but it will also avoid the freeze/thaw problems you face with traditional storage mechanisms.
One thing I found online was just pouring the slurry into 0.5L fizzy water bottles (sanitized) and sticking it in the fridge for months.
Another completely possible option is just growing a starter, pitching that whole and harvesting yeast from the cake to repitch later. Wash if it's going to be more than a week between batches, and refrigerate because it won't be more than 4 weeks between batches.
I could do that, and since I'm getting 4 activators, probably be able to refresh the line every few generations. I'm getting 4 because of the relationship between unit price and shipping. Why pay $10 to ship a $6 yeast pack, when you could pay $15 to ship 4 of them? Gives me a little wiggle and room to mess up too.
Overall, my goal is to get enough yeast to brew at least one year's worth of IPAs and Ambers, so maybe ten batches. Eventually, I'd love to be able to get a more intense yeast library learning about slants and other techniques, but this is more of the entry-level system.
In a related note, there's been mention of ways to estimate yeast density without a haemocytometer. Anyone have any suggestions? I'm microscopeless at the time, and to be perfectly honest for the near future- if I had some spare cash to spend on this hobby I'd probably be investing it in the pots and tuns to convert to a 10 gallon system first.
What I would like to do is grow one up into a fairly large slurry, split the slurry, and store it in the moderate to long term- something like 6 to 12 months. This is in part an exercise in learning yeast techniques and in part a practical thing: I'm told pacman is great for IPAs and Ambers, which I tend to brew 75% of the time, so having a good supply of this yeast is excellent.
My strategy is basically following a lot of what I've read on this forum and elsewhere. Step up from the activator to a 1L to a 4L wort slurry, I use stone aeration for that. The problem comes at storage time- between reading here, books, and listening to the brewstrong podcast, I've gotten a lot of conflicting information about best practices.
One thing mentioned on the BS Podcast (heh) was possibly using a considerably higher than 15% glycerin solution and just sticking it in a normal freezer- this will never actually freeze, but it will also avoid the freeze/thaw problems you face with traditional storage mechanisms.
One thing I found online was just pouring the slurry into 0.5L fizzy water bottles (sanitized) and sticking it in the fridge for months.
Another completely possible option is just growing a starter, pitching that whole and harvesting yeast from the cake to repitch later. Wash if it's going to be more than a week between batches, and refrigerate because it won't be more than 4 weeks between batches.
I could do that, and since I'm getting 4 activators, probably be able to refresh the line every few generations. I'm getting 4 because of the relationship between unit price and shipping. Why pay $10 to ship a $6 yeast pack, when you could pay $15 to ship 4 of them? Gives me a little wiggle and room to mess up too.
Overall, my goal is to get enough yeast to brew at least one year's worth of IPAs and Ambers, so maybe ten batches. Eventually, I'd love to be able to get a more intense yeast library learning about slants and other techniques, but this is more of the entry-level system.
In a related note, there's been mention of ways to estimate yeast density without a haemocytometer. Anyone have any suggestions? I'm microscopeless at the time, and to be perfectly honest for the near future- if I had some spare cash to spend on this hobby I'd probably be investing it in the pots and tuns to convert to a 10 gallon system first.
