Mythbusters

[govorko1974]

Hi all, being new to HB i was talking to an old bloke who brewed 20-25 yrs ago, and he reckoned if you tipped a tallie of certain beer into your brew it would make your HB taste like it. forgot to ask him if you did this before or after fermentation. I thought it sounded like some BS but was wonder if anyone had heard or tried this before..personally i cant see it would make any difference.

 

[manticle]

I tipped a bottle of duvel into a not so great attempt at a belgian pale ale. Didn't taste like duvel but the beer did get the amazing fluffy meringue head that duvel gets.

 

[bum]

Perhaps he was confused and is thinking of making yoghurt instead.

 

[Dave70]

I can't answer this untill I grow a bushy mustache and pop on my beret..

 

[kenlock]

Maybe the yeast in the bottle? ie. Coopers Pale Ale.

 

[Macca81]

i have heard that, but i have never tried it coz it sounds like BS to me. cant see how such a small amount of beer could sudenly make the rest of the kit taste like it...

 

[Nick JD]

If your brew was 300ml and the bottle you tipped in it was 750ml...

...it'd work pretty well, I reckon.

Time to pull a :wacko: face.

 

[MeLoveBeer]

It wouldn't make the beer taste like it, but they reckon guinness has sour guinness as an ingredient.

 

[enuun]

worth a try. especially if the bottle u tipped is bottle-conditioned. might be the yeasty goodness created something magicial.

 

[Wolfy]

... he reckoned if you tipped a tallie of certain beer into your brew it would make your HB taste like it.

IF it was a bottle conditioned beer, you'd have a small amount of yeast that may impart some flavour characteristics to the beer it was tipped into.
However without the recipe also being similar and so many other factors, there is no way that tipping a tallie into your beer is going to make it taste the same.

 

[waggastew]

Leading on from this........has anyone tried to pitch a shaken bottle of beer as the only yeast source? Say a shaken bottle of Coopers Pale? Surely its sanitary and has a reasonable amount of yeast?

 

[kelbygreen]

there is a article of how to reculture bottle yeast from coppers bottles. You need more then 1 bottle and you only use the last say 3cm not the whole bottle if you store long enough in the fridge the yeast drops to the bottom and can get 95% the beer out and still have yeast

 

[waggastew]

Yeah I have read about culturing yeasts from commercial bottles. I was just interested in why using the yeast from a single bottle pitched straight in would not work. Too much lag? Not enough yeasties to form a strong ferment? Nasties e.g. bacteria take over in the lag time?

The science teacher in me wants to do an experiment!

 

[Wolfy]

Leading on from this........has anyone tried to pitch a shaken bottle of beer as the only yeast source? Say a shaken bottle of Coopers Pale? Surely its sanitary and has a reasonable amount of yeast?

Reasonable in what regard?
To pitch into a full batch of wort, not even close.
To reculture in small steps to and make a starter, sure.

 

[jakub76]

worth a try. especially if the bottle u tipped is bottle-conditioned. might be the yeasty goodness created something magicial.

yeah...magical

you can achieve the same or similar yeast flavour profile by culturing and using the yeast from said tallie. Give yourself more of a chance by reading something about the proper way to reculture yeast. You might want to do it over a week as opposed to just pouring a tallie of your fav poison in there. Keep in mind that some bottle conditioned beers actually use a different yeast for conditioning than for the primary fermentation - wow, more research - bummer

Apparently they make hooch in jail. 1x toilet bowl, some cabbage, a packet of bread yeast from the kitchen, just pour in some f*ckin hennessy - golden

 

[Yob]

Yeah I have read about culturing yeasts from commercial bottles. I was just interested in why using the yeast from a single bottle pitched straight in would not work. Too much lag? Not enough yeasties to form a strong ferment? Nasties e.g. bacteria take over in the lag time?

The science teacher in me wants to do an experiment!

you get a very small population of yeast with a single bottle, collecting from several is better, both for the palate (don't drink from the bottle you are collecting from) and the stepping up procedure.. reculturing involves making a new population of your'e desired strain over several steps.. (CHECK OUT MR MALTY FOR PITCHING RATES- http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html) say 50ml collected yeast into 150ml (fresh wort or LDMA medium) to 500ml to 1lt to 2 tl (over a period of days) and then capturing this yeast via droppiig out in the the fridge and cleaning or directly pitching the wort.. depending on your methods...

hee hee.. I tried once to reculture the fabled coopers yeast.. underpitched in a large way... er... I drank it all almost exclusively myself and called it my punnishment... to note that was my third brew.. 4 through 6 have been markedly improved..IMO and others thus far who have managed to pry one from my fingers have not complained...

disclaimer.. you can have a beer but I want the bottle back...
:icon_drunk:

 

[Mayor of Mildura]

Yeah I have read about culturing yeasts from commercial bottles. I was just interested in why using the yeast from a single bottle pitched straight in would not work. Too much lag? Not enough yeasties to form a strong ferment? Nasties e.g. bacteria take over in the lag time?

The science teacher in me wants to do an experiment!

This may not be ideal but it has been done. Read about it here. Scroll down to the fifth question.

 

[Wolfy]

The science teacher in me wants to do an experiment!

Do it!
If you were lucky and very clean/sanitary it might even work - just be prepared to waste batches of beer while you try to get something drinkable using this technique.

The dregs of 1 bottle to have about 1-2ml of yeast slurry, and most likely only 10% (or less) of that is still viable (due to age and storage conditions), if you were to pitch that into an average batch of beer, you'd be pitching about 1000 times less yeast than you should.
There would be a very high chance of infection, wild yeast infestation or something else 'bad' happening before the yeast from the bottle reproduced to the extent that they are ready to started fermenting. Then when they do start fermenting - if they have not been out competed by bacteria or wild yeast - the bottle-yeast would be stressed, have consumed most of the vital nutrients, the ferment would be slow and the lag-time significant. In addition the yeast-reproduction would produce a range of esters and possibly 'undesirable' flavours.

If it was a science experiment and you were able to sterilise (not just sanitize) the wort/container/etc then you might have some chance of producing something drinkable, but that's not very likely in a typical home situation.

 

[waggastew]

OK, so its an underpitching issue. Thanks for the explanation Wolfy. Makes me think I might do starters for all my brews from now on rather than sprinkling dry yeast.

 

[Yob]

OK, so its an underpitching issue. Thanks for the explanation Wolfy. Makes me think I might do starters for all my brews from now on rather than sprinkling dry yeast.

if you have a commercial dried yeast, you can proof it but making it into a starter is questionable unless you are doing larger than normal volumes (eg 40lt batches require more than the standard amount of yeast)

doing a starter is ideal if you want to re-use yeast or as per the OP, capturing and reculturing a particular strain.. if you are doing a normal batch,(23-26lt) proof or sprinke, have a bit of a read in the wikki articles on yeast or do a search for the multitude of yeast threads on the forum.

At the very least it's great fun to do starters and you can get a good indication of how things work with the little yeasties....

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...showarticle=125