yeast-napping; culturing GF

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DirtbagHB

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So, i want a heffe. ive come close. very close. but its still not right. from what i understand the 'heffewisen' flavor relies heavily on the yeast used. ive had these disillusions lately about finding a heffe yeast from a NON-GF source and making it GF

so my plan is to find a heffe-beer at the store that has been bottle conditioned (krausen in german) and inoculating a bottle of GF wort. growing it up. then doing it again, and again until it can be considered GF. then using that to make a GF heffe.

so i have 4x 250ml lab flasks, that im going to inoculate 1 at time. lets call the flasks A,B,C,&D. inoculate A from the store bought Heffe using 10mls, wait 3 days, then inoculate B from A with 5 mls, C from B, and D from C, then pitch D. ive become impatient and i would like it for the next batch. im going to do a quinoa IPA, and would like to do a quinoa heffe.

brew day is in 1-2 weeks, just toasted my malted quinoa so it needs some rest.

so can i just make a sugar solution with some yeast nutrient and call it good.

or should i just make a small beer batch, sorghum extract, hops, and all?
 
It might be a good idea to let the yeast settle from each flask, remove the liquid and then add a small amount of the cake to the next flask. This will reduce the amount of gluten you are transferring with each step.

What size "brews" are you going to do in the flask? If you do 100mL each time, then by the time you get to flask D you will have a 1 in 10 000 dilution which wll be almost completely GF I would say.

This goes back to the old argument of what is actually GF, 5ppm, 20ppm 0ppm?
I think it all depends on your reaction to gluten. Someone who is super sensitive might still react to gluten at the levels you will end up with, while you won't.

There is only one way to find out.

You could probably do the same with a non GF yeast instead of a store bought Heffe.
 
so my plan is to put 250ml of growth medium 'brew' into each flask. with a total of 4 flasks. ill take a bottle conditioned store bought Heffe, prolly of germanic origin, pour it into a glass so my girlfriend can drink it. then ill procede to pipette out the cake. prolly 2 mls. using this cake ill inoculate my first flask. then use the cake of the first flask to inoculate the second, so on so forth. after i get flask 4 inoculated. ill wash 1-3 re fill em and continue again.

im curious how many times might i have to inoculate the flasks until im confident they are GF. im rather sensitive to Gluten, so i may be culturing out 7 times. but im determined to make a GF heffe yeast.

i most certainly could do this with any yeast that i would like to. the starter selection at my LHBS is really crappy and awefully expensive. how ever their heffe selection is expansive and in expensive.

so im still curious about the medium. can i just do a sugar water yeast nutirent solution. or do i need to do a boil with extracts, hops, and the whole bit?
 
If you are just wanting to dilute out the gluten then I would just use a sugar water solution, though you could use some sorghum syrup instead to 'pre-condition' the yeast.

If you are very sensitive to gluten then the more times you dilute the better, though I don't really know how many times exactly, or how you would test for it, I found this on google;

As this relates to beer, there is a gluten protein found in barley. This protein is known as hordein. Wheat gluten is known as gliadin. Rye gluten is known as secalin. Presently, assay tests (or lab tests) are only commercially available for the testing of gliadin. We are unaware of any tests for hordein or any manufacturer that presently tests for hordein (Note: If you know of anyone that does in fact test specifically for hordein, please let us know). Therefore the idea that a barley based beer can be considered gluten free based upon the lack of testing is very difficult to fathom. It should be understood that a company using an assay test for gliadin to test for hordein will not return accurate results.
 
If you are planning a German-style hefe, trying to culture might not be the way to go. Most of the German hefes are bottle conditioned with a lager yeast that is fine and stays in suspension. I would try getting a regular yeast culture and then propigate it up GF from there.
 
So yeast napping may not be a good way to go. On the grounds that many breweries flash pasturize their beers then pitch a second yeast to bottle condition. So, what does everyone mean by get a yeast and propigate it gf, if I can't nab it from a bottle. I've had great luck with dry yeast but doesn't have The heffe flavor. Am I trying to capture something wild. Or get a smack pack and propigate the yeast pouch inside till gf?
 
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