Renewing The Yeast Cultures

[Zwickel]

howdy homebrewers and a happy easter

The weather is f..ing lousy, around 0C and a little bit snow around here.
o....Im still dreaming about my visit in Western Australia...f....c...k

All of my kegs are filled up with foin Pilseners now, so there is nothing to do at my little brewery.
Today I was racking my latest Pilsener, so I got a lot of fresh yeast.
Then I decided to renew one of my most used yeast strain that Im storing on Agar-Agar.
Basically Im storing a strain on Agar for about one year.

So I started boiling a litre of wort, add some Agar-Agar to it and leave it boiling for a while.
After the boil filled the wort in some vials.
After the Wort cooled down and became stiff, I inoculated each vessel with the fresh harvested yeast.

Now Im the proud owner of more than 25 vessels containing a beautiful Pilsener yeast. That should be enough for one year

Here a view at my day work.

Id rather go fishing.....on a sunny place like Jurien Bay WA...what Im doing here...

Cheers mates :icon_cheers:

 

[blackbock]

How long have you been using this technique Zwickel? and how many generations of yeast have you been using?

BB

 

[Zwickel]

Hello BB,

Im applying this method already more than 5 years. Meanwhile I own a pretty little yeast bank.

How to proceed:
First youll need a very fresh yeast, say from a first generation. Store it on Agar as Ive described.
One day, when you need a second batch of yeast vials, just fill one of your first generation vial with fresh wort, keep it for a day and you may inocculate the next batch of vials from that starter. The rest of it you may use for a brew....and so on.

You may do that about 10 times in a row, should be good for the next 10 years.

I know, you wanna ask about mutation and degeneration, no worries.
As long as youre going to use the yeast from Agar to Agar, there is no stress to the yeast and hardly no degeneration and/or mutation, not like in brew.
Copying the yeast from Agar to Agar is very simple and you may do that for the rest of your life.

Cheers :icon_cheers:

 

[chiller]

Hello BB,

Im applying this method already more than 5 years. Meanwhile I own a pretty little yeast bank.

How to proceed:
First youll need a very fresh yeast, say from a first generation. Store it on Agar as Ive described.
One day, when you need a second batch of yeast vials, just fill one of your first generation vial with fresh wort, keep it for a day and you may inocculate the next batch of vials from that starter. The rest of it you may use for a brew....and so on.

You may do that about 10 times in a row, should be good for the next 10 years.

I know, you wanna ask about mutation and degeneration, no worries.
As long as youre going to use the yeast from Agar to Agar, there is no stress to the yeast and hardly no degeneration and/or mutation, not like in brew.
Copying the yeast from Agar to Agar is very simple and you may do that for the rest of your life.

Cheers :icon_cheers:

It is an excellent method. I recently revived a 5 year old "sleeping" 1728 on a slant. It took about 2 days or a bit more to get to a one litre starter. I have not noticed any problems using tis method. When I make my slants I leave them for about 7 days [sealed] without inoculating them and then give them a very close inspection for any growth of any kind. I have only once had a slant that had to be dumped because of contamination. It was very visible to my eye after the seven days.

Zwickel, would you describe your method for reviving the slant up to the starter?

Steve

 

[quadbox]

Zwickel, would you describe your method for reviving the slant up to the starter?

I'm also quite interested in this. Planning on doing up my first slants next week (some wlp-023 and some wlp-001), that's the only part of the process I'm not entirely clear on. Have seen a couple of different ways suggested.

As an aside, someone on another forum pointed out these guys (no affiliation) who sell 50 packs of screw-top test tubes relatively cheap, see down the page

 

[pint of lager]

Zwickle, try adding a bit less agar/malt solution to the tubes and laying them down a bit further. This will give a greater surface area for the yeasties to do their thing.

Then, as chiller suggested, leave them for a week to allow for any infected tubes to show up before innoculating them.

Otherwise, a fine day's work.

 

[ausdb]

howdy homebrewers and a happy easter

The weather is f..ing lousy, around 0C and a little bit snow around here.
o....Im still dreaming about my visit in Western Australia...f....c...k
Cheers mates :icon_cheers:

Hi Zwickel that weather is a bit different to Kooks house on Australia day, maybe we should send the 4 kettles your place to warm you up a bit!!

Thanks for the info it's something I have been meaning to try for a long time, you make it seem quite simple.

 

[chiller]

Here is my method of reviving a slant.

Method [mine] Sterile cooled starter -- about 5 or 10 ml into the slant tube. Shake and re seal. Over the next 24 hours gently ease off the cap with it right next to your ear. When you hear a phwwwt!! [ gas escaping noise] that is the time you have enough to add to about 50ml of starter. Leave for 24 hours and then transfer to 240 ml of starter after another 24 hours step up to about 500 - 1000 ml.

Steve

 

[Pumpy]

I wish I could do all that agar stuff to save yeast!! is it that hard !!!would save a fortune


Pumpy

 

[chiller]

I wish I could do all that agar stuff to save yeast!! is it that hard !!!would save a fortune


Pumpy

There are other methods -- but -- no matter which method you choose, sanitation is paramount. I use both slants and storage under distilled water. The distilled water method has been very good for me. Slants are a bit like the Rolls Royce of yeast ranches. The little yeasties seem to go to sleep and the moment you re-introduce some food they take off where they once were. I only brew Ales so cannot comment if "girlie" lager yeasts are as robust. I would imagine they are.

My Belgian yeast collection is under water with a backup slant.

 

[Pumpy]

Chiller is there any step by step posts on this process ?????



pumpy :unsure:

 

[Pumpy]

Pumpy, have a look at this link.


Wally

Wow Nothing short of Excellent thanks Wally

pumpy

 

[quadbox]

Two others in my bookmark tree: here and here

 

[Zwickel]

Zwickle, try adding a bit less agar/malt solution to the tubes and laying them down a bit further. This will give a greater surface area for the yeasties to do their thing.

yeah, thats right, but this way it works fine too:

If you lay it down further, youre in a danger the liquid flows out and if the vessel is contaminated outside, you have to threw it away.

Zwickel, would you describe your method for reviving the slant up to the starter?

okey-dokey, I didnt know thats interesting to you.

After one week of inoculation (keep it for the first week at ambient/room temp), Im storing the slants in my converted freezer, around 2C.
Whenever I need a starter, Im taking one of it, rewarm it to around 20C. Meanwhile I have taken 1litre of frozen wort and rewarm the wort to 20 too.
Fill in some wort into the slant, close the lid and wait. Keep the rest of the wort in the fridge.
After a day, depends on how old the slant already is, sometimes it needs two days, you may see very fine little bubbles on the surface.
Thats the sign the fermentation has begun.
Now Im taking a larger vessel, say an Erlenmeyer with a size of one litre. Transfer the content of the slant into the Erlenmeyer add about 100ml wort (rewarmed in the microwave to 20C) put in a magnetic fish and put it on the magnetic stirrer, start stirring.

After another day you may see now a huge foam head in the vessel, now you transfer the content into a larger vessel, Im taking 5l bottles, add the rest of the wort, stirr well and start airaiting it and start cooling down slowly. For cooling I put the whole equipment into my fermentation fridge.

here another pic:

Then after another day add some more wort to it, depends on how much yeast youll need.
Meanwhile the temp has reached about 10to 12C.

Leave th wort over night to settle and decant next day, fill in more fresh wort.

In the end it looks like that:

thats all. (apologies for my poor english)

Cheers

 

[quadbox]

I'm going to be putting together my first slant collection next week, should be fun. Have picked up fifty of those v-bottom free standing test tube thingies with the screw-tops, will be doing up about twenty WLP-023 (aka wyeast 1275 iirc), twenty WLP-001 (wyeast 1056) and a few wlp-001's, mostly because I have some around and figure I'll do some side-by-side's with the burton ale.

That should last me a while. Will save me quite a lot all told, until fairly recently was paying through the teeth for sachets of saf for every brew. at $4 or so a brew, adds up quick

 

[Zwickel]

that little bastards have been very hungry and over active; this morning I found one of the slants bursted, completely destroyed from overpressure.

Guess I kept it a little bit too warm, around 24C.

So carefully I opened each vessel just a little and immediately closed it again, so there wouldnt be any pressure left inside.

It never happened to me before.

Im gonna punish them, put em in the cold now.

Cheers :icon_cheers:

 

[Kleiny]

Thanks guys
this has made me want too have ago at slants i always thought they were a bit too hard
but the links and chat on this forum have made it a lot clearer

cheers

 

[Franko]

Im going to give this a go.
Pumpy if your interested give us a call and we'll get off to a start

Franko

 

[alexbrand]

Im going to give this a go.

It's really an excellent method for yeast farming. I do it, too: Picture

Alex

 

[Sprungmonkey]

Hi all. Quick question when making a starter from cultures in the slants people are stepping up from 50 to 250 to 500 to 1500mL. Is there any real point in stepping up to 1500ml. I don't really understand why so much is made up for the starter? Could you simply add to the fermentor at 250ml?