Starter from commercial beer

[PartyBible]

Id like to harvest some cells from a comercial beer. Any recommendations on how this is done?

 

[Fletch78]

I can tell you how I'm doing it right now, from a homebrew (I wasn't interested in washing the yeast cake until I poured it out. )

I boiled about a cup of water and sterilized a small glass jar and lid. After the water cooled down, covered, I poured it into the jar and refrigerated. It filled the jar about halfway. Then, after each beer, I pour the little bit of yeast in the bottom, into the jar and return to refrigerator. After about 6 beers, the jar was full, and I poured off some of the liquid (the yeast is building in the bottom nicely) to make room for another 6 pack. After 12 beers, I expect to have enough yeast to make a starter with, for another batch in the next couple of weeks.

It's probably not the most effective way to do it, but we'll see.

 

[-TPM-]

It's worth mentioning that not all comercial beer will work. Quite a few filter/pasturize/use a second strain of yeast to carbonate.

 

[bknifefight]

I harvested yeast from Dead Guy Ale once and it worked great. I just poured my beer, leaving a little beer in the bottom of the bottle. I took a lighter to the lip of the bottle to kill any nasties I had picked up on it, swirled the beer up in the bottle to suspend the yeast and poured it in a mason jar I kept in the fridge. Simple as that. After doing this for a case worth of beer, I had quite a bit of yeast that I grew in a proper starter.

 

[fatinma]

ok, so a noob question here. Once you get a starter, what do you do with it? Do you add more yeast to your starter or just use that alone?

 

[fatherbigfoot]

I usually keep some extra malt extract sitting arond and will boild a few cups of water and a half a cup of DME up cool it down and pour it into a sanatized growler then pour 3/4 of the beer from my bottle into a glass and swirl the remaining beer and semament in the bottle and dump it into the growler and then just put some tin foil on the top (it acts like a air lock) and in a few days I have a nice layer of yeast that has dropped out of solution in the bottom. Then when I get my wort all cooled down I will swirl the contents around to get the yeast in solution and just dump it into the primary fermentor with the wort if i can't get to my starter with in a few days after i notice the fermentation tailing off I will throw it in the fridge untill a few hours before i pitch and then continue as normal

 

[3PegBrew]

Make a quick wort for your saved yeast or new yeast. Suspend the yeast in your small wort. Put an air lock on your container or aluminum foil loosley fitted.

Place your starter into your MAIN wort during vigorous fermentation.