reclaiming duvel yeast from the bottle - why so slow?

[Steve973]

In our efforts to produce a duvel clone, a friend has created a starter in which he used the yeast from three duvel bottles. It is showing a litlte activity - some foam and some bubbles in the starter wort. But it seems to be going quite slow. Should we attribute this to the (lack of) viability of the duvel yeast from sitting in a bottle for however long, and to the fact that the bottom of thee bottles isn't much yeast to start with? I suggested that he might boil up some more wort and add some yeast energizer to the starter. What would you folks recommend?

 

[david_42]

Stepping up the starter is a good idea. As a backup, Wyeast 1388 is Duvel yeast.

 

[Hopfan]

I would expect it to be very slow starting. There is not a large population of yeast from the bottles. Yeast nutrient would be a plus in getting the colony to grow.

 

[boo boo]

I would expect it to be very slow starting. There is not a large population of yeast from the bottles. Yeast nutrient would be a plus in getting the colony to grow.

Exactly.

Some brewers don't use the same strain for brewing their beer as they do for bottling. so your yeast may not be the one you want. This is just a "heads up' as it could very well be the strain you want also.

 

[sonvolt]

Isn't Duvel using the old Edme English Ale strain . . . not a particularly exciting yeast strain is it?

I am eager to see what your efforts produce. Keep us updated.

 

[BeaverBrewer1]

I also harvested some yeast from a duvel bottle. I had a very long lag time - something like a week - before I saw any convincing fermentation. Now it is going gangbusters. Since Duvel has a fair amount of refined sugar at the end of fermentation (at least in the clone), I chalk it up to the yeast having lost the taste for malt...

So, I have a question for those who have actually recovered Duvel yeast:

Did you see odd clumping, like little grains of yeast, floating in the primary?

I think I've seen this with other strains, but since I didn't streak this out to single colonies, I'd like to be sure that I've got duvel yeast and not something wild going on...