Collecting Yeast

[abbottdk]

I have read several threads about washing yeast from the primary fermenter. I have just strated to ferment a pilsner and was wondering once fermentation becomes active could I take a 1 litre sample off the fermenter and allow it to ferment separate and then use it as the starter for the next batch. If this is OK how many times would you do this before renewing the yeast.

Doug

 

[adryargument]

I have read several threads about washing yeast from the primary fermenter. I have just strated to ferment a pilsner and was wondering once fermentation becomes active could I take a 1 litre sample off the fermenter and allow it to ferment separate and then use it as the starter for the next batch. If this is OK how many times would you do this before renewing the yeast.

Doug

Probably best to wait until it is finished, and once you have filled your bottles/kegs, harvest from the yeast cake on the bottom.
Let the beer do the work for you, otherwise you will spend way to much effort and time doing the same thing with a side-starter.

 

[QldKev]

Probably best to wait until it is finished, and once you have filled your bottles/kegs, harvest from the yeast cake on the bottom.
Let the beer do the work for you, otherwise you will spend way to much effort and time doing the same thing with a side-starter.

Exactly how I do it, just pour out about 2/3 of the yeast cake (into bottles if you want to keep it for later) and then throw the next cube of wort onto the remaining 1/3 yeasties so they can gobble up all that sugery goodness.

Although I think there is a difference between the first use of the yeast and the second, I've brewed for up to 4months straight on one yeast cake and don't beleive the yeast changes that much. I assume the difference between the first use and second would probably come down to pitching rates.

QldKev

 

[Bribie G]

I'd agree with Kev there. Whilst yeast cake also contains a lot of cold break proteins, dead cells etc it does fire up very quickly. Apart from a few craft breweries and real old traditional breweries in the UK and Europe, nearly every brewery on the planet uses big cylindrical conical fermenters and, guess what, there's a dedicated spigot at the bottom for drawing off yeast "cake".

 

[khendrickson]

I have never done it. "The Complete Joys of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian" has a section on it. You can basically do a sort primary fermination in glass and then seal. I have seen it done with LDME. If they are keep in a cool dark place, the sealed cultures can last up to a year.

I suspect that it is sorta like keeping a sour dough culture going but with sugar instead of flour. My brewing shed produces the best sour dough bread around.

 

[CONNOR BREWARE]

I have read several threads about washing yeast from the primary fermenter. I have just strated to ferment a pilsner and was wondering once fermentation becomes active could I take a 1 litre sample off the fermenter and allow it to ferment separate and then use it as the starter for the next batch. If this is OK how many times would you do this before renewing the yeast.

Doug

To Top Crop or Not to crop top...sorry bad pun

A good book is "yeast, the practical guide to beer fermentation" it even covers capturing wild yeast. Authors are Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff. I kid you not its a bloody good read.

To me it boils down to how much you want to keep that strain you have as close to the original in a HB environment. But without a pretty good home lab and washing techniques I can't see that happening with out changes to each generation.

I've only top cropped once in a recent 'emergency' when my second fermenter, a Carboy, wouldnt kick off. Its fraught with danger of introducing nasties to your fermenter. It worked though.

Pro-culture liquid yeast recommends 6-10 uses of the same yeast and I believe this is based on farming from the yeast cake.

Got to run to work but basically is it worth it? Yes if you are into the cropping for the fun of it and you yeast is that awe inspiring, no if you are just looking to keep good yeast on hand and play it safe, in this case go with the previous advice of farming some of your cake and pitching a new brwe onto the remainder. it simple and effective.

 

[proudscum]

Have just top cropped an Ale.BUT i have all the gear to culture so it was easy for me.
Last night canned some left over kettle runnings that i filtered then let it settle,diluted then reboiled.Then autoclaved in pressure cooker for 15min.Put 50ml of wort in preserving jar to put the top cropped yeast in till i transfer to a flask.100ml wort in 250 ml flask with foil on top and 700ml wort in a litre flask also foiled.

This morning sterised a 30ml ladle and funnel in pressure cooker san starred everything set up jar,flask etc.opened jar with lid resting on top,same for fermenter and pressure cooker.
Took deep breath scooped yeast from the middle of the foamy head and straight into jar with wort.Closed everything up and started to breath again.Re san starred after cleaning small spill
and transfered caught yeast and wort via funnel into waiting flask.Straight on to stir plate will give it 12 hours and step it up to the bigger flask if i think it is ready.

From what i have read you could also do this for SOME Lager/Pilsener strains if they produce a nice creamy Kraeusen on day 2 or 3.

Flame suit on as this is the first time top cropping,have tried to keep everything as aseptic as possible turned the heating off so less dust blowing around,autoclaved and flamed everything,san starred whole area including hands and forearms and tried not to touch or breath on anything that will come into contact will the yeast.

 

[EMalmgren]

Exactly how I do it, just pour out about 2/3 of the yeast cake (into bottles if you want to keep it for later) and then throw the next cube of wort onto the remaining 1/3 yeasties so they can gobble up all that sugery goodness.

Although I think there is a difference between the first use of the yeast and the second, I've brewed for up to 4months straight on one yeast cake and don't beleive the yeast changes that much. I assume the difference between the first use and second would probably come down to pitching rates.

QldKev

Rogue re-uses their Pacman strain to the 5th generation. I found a short read from their brewmaster awhile ago, the basics being "We dont use it past the 5th generation because yeast cells do start to mutate after (X amount) of generations." My para-phrasing, of course.

 

[Wolfy]

I have read several threads about washing yeast from the primary fermenter. I have just strated to ferment a pilsner and was wondering once fermentation becomes active could I take a 1 litre sample off the fermenter and allow it to ferment separate and then use it as the starter for the next batch. If this is OK how many times would you do this before renewing the yeast.

Yes you could do that.

However, as others have suggested, you would be better harvesting the yeast directly. If the yeast dense on the top of your fermenting beer, you could top crop it, else you may be better to harvest it from the yeast-cake, after fermentation has finished.

Depending on your sanitation and procedures, you could re-use the yeast up to 8 times. But a number closer to 3-5 is probably more realistic for most home-brewers, the two biggest factors are yeast mutation and infection, with infection being the common concern when re-use yeast multiple times at home.

 

[QldKev]

Funny thing is it's only ever on homebrew forums I read about mutations

http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/craft_yeast_storage.html
They say 5-10 time for a homebrewer, but not due to mutation.



QldKev

 

[ekul]

I read in a book called 'the handbook of brewing' that breweries reuse their yeast 50-60 times. I don't know if its a good book, or if the information is correct. I do know that after reusing yeast a few times it starts to taste better, but not significantly so.

I used to bottle some a few stubbies from the first fermentation, then reuse the yeast cake 4 or so times. Then move onto the next bottle. Now i just reuse the yeast until i want to use something else.

Recently i've found that liquid yeast is probably cheaper for me in the long run becuase i can split the pack four ways at the start, something i don't do with dried yeast.

 

[Wolfy]

Funny thing is it's only ever on homebrew forums I read about mutations

http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/craft_yeast_storage.html
They say 5-10 time for a homebrewer, but not due to mutation.

Most likely because other more technical sources often call them things like 'respiratory mutants' or 'petite mutants'.

Obviously most unique strains of beer have been developed via mutation and change over time, however, those changes are not always good, and there are various examples (even on these forums) where people have used yeast for a period of time, and it has shown changes characteristics - that have not always been good - after only a handful of re-pitches, while they many not have said 'mutations' that's essentially what it means.

I read in a book called 'the handbook of brewing' that breweries reuse their yeast 50-60 times. I don't know if its a good book, or if the information is correct. I do know that after reusing yeast a few times it starts to taste better, but not significantly so.

Some breweries (especially those in the UK) have/had been reusing their yeast for 100's of years.
However, with changes in brewery practice and design (large metal conical fermentors replacing the more shallow and often open fermentors) putting more stress on the yeast, and changing the conditions it is used to, more yeast is grown in the lab and introduced into the brewery more frequently than in the past.

 

[felten]

I think it was a few weeks ago that I heard anchor steam brewery talking about how they've reused their yeast for like 40 years, they occasionally acid wash it, but no new cultures.

You could keep reusing your yeast until you're unhappy with the end results in the beer, or until it gets infected if you wanted to. I limit mine to using the same yeast for 3 batches in a row, but that's because it gets too long between brews for me to store it in the fridge after that.

 

[EMalmgren]

It seems to me like hairs are being split here.

We can all agree that some sort of "change" happens after using the same yeast for so long, yet people are really shy about calling it a "mutation".

I'm not knocking the logic (or lack thereof) at all, its just a tad bit comical.


Anyways, my personal feeling on re-using yeast is "Why bother"? So many yeasts are essentially the same and its easy enough to find the same qualities in both liquid and dry forms that culturing, storing, then using the required DME to make a starter isnt excatly beneficial considering I can buy a good pack of dried yeast for a few bucks. Now if I'm doing a special brew like a belgian requiring that typical belgian spice or a german wheat, I may be inclined to spend the $8 to get that required taste. However, 95% of my brews its only me drinking on, so I really dont care. I seperate my yeast by "malt oriented" or "hop driven".

Just my .02

 

[felten]

liquids are a little more pricey here, and we're all really cheap.

 

[gone_fishing]

I think it was a few weeks ago that I heard anchor steam brewery talking about how they've reused their yeast for like 40 years, they occasionally acid wash it, but no new cultures.

You could keep reusing your yeast until you're unhappy with the end results in the beer, or until it gets infected if you wanted to. I limit mine to using the same yeast for 3 batches in a row, but that's because it gets too long between brews for me to store it in the fridge after that.

Hey,

I bet those guys at Anchor Steam just harvest a slurry from the bottom of their fermenter and pitch with that??????

Chances are they have a yeast cultivation proceedure that would cost more per-annum than the average Aussie salary.

GF

 

[felten]

You'd have to listen to the interview to get the specifics, I can't remember them off the top of my head.

 

[Wolfy]

Given that Anchor Steam use 'traditional' open fermentors one would presume they top-crop and that the stresses on yeast (due to 'modern' conical fermentors that I mentioned above) are minimal, allowing them to reuse and repitch their yeast in a very different ways to most other modern breweries.

 

[gone_fishing]

Perhaps Thirsty boy could pipe in and estimate the annual outlay to maintain the "single strain" that CUB use? I imagine Anchor steam will be in that "ballpark".
I guesstimate $200,000/annum?
GF

 

[felten]

I think you're missing the difference in my original comment where I alluded to them re-pitching directly from a previous ferment, as opposed to re-culturing from a base stock that's kept frozen in nitrogen somewhere. They're a very traditional brewery that still uses very shallow open fermenters with no cooling jackets, just using ambient air to control the temp.

They've kept re-pitching from the bottom of the fermenter for the past 20 years, with occasional acid washing.


I had to listen to the podcast again.