I cubed a Special Bitter on Friday and started a Ringwood from the sediment in a bottle I had kept from the end of a bottling session with a couple of cm of sediment in it. Made up a solution of water and LDME boiled for ten minutes and cooled in a sterile Schott bottle, mixed dregs of beer with it (with my method you get to drink the beer, identical procedure to culturing a Coopers). Nothing much seemed to happen overnight or on Saturday. I kept shaking and aerating the bottle and some gas hissing out but no top cropping or anything. It just kept settling out and sitting there.
On getting home from work at 1 am it had occurred to me that I may have made the LDME solution too strong and zonked out the yeast. I'm always a bit slap happy with my starters but they usually work. I'd used two well heaped tablespoons in half a litre of water so really wasn't sure what gravity that would give and grabbed the hydrometer as soon as I got home.
First I had a sip of the wort to see if it tasted too sweet or syrupy. Dry as Buttersd70s humour. Absolutely bone dry fermented right out to 1002. But there had been no sign of fermenting apart from gas obviously being produced (schott bottle opened just a wee crack). I noticed that the sediment is now thick and curdled and quite plentiful. Of course I'll pitch right now but it's strange for a yeast like Ringwood that normally tries to climb out of the fermenter and strangle you.
And it tastes fantastic, the finished 'ale' in the sample was almost good enough to stand alone as a brew Just a heads up for anyone culturing this and other yeasts where it appears the sample might be dead or dormant, always grab your hydrometer :icon_cheers:
On getting home from work at 1 am it had occurred to me that I may have made the LDME solution too strong and zonked out the yeast. I'm always a bit slap happy with my starters but they usually work. I'd used two well heaped tablespoons in half a litre of water so really wasn't sure what gravity that would give and grabbed the hydrometer as soon as I got home.
First I had a sip of the wort to see if it tasted too sweet or syrupy. Dry as Buttersd70s humour. Absolutely bone dry fermented right out to 1002. But there had been no sign of fermenting apart from gas obviously being produced (schott bottle opened just a wee crack). I noticed that the sediment is now thick and curdled and quite plentiful. Of course I'll pitch right now but it's strange for a yeast like Ringwood that normally tries to climb out of the fermenter and strangle you.
And it tastes fantastic, the finished 'ale' in the sample was almost good enough to stand alone as a brew Just a heads up for anyone culturing this and other yeasts where it appears the sample might be dead or dormant, always grab your hydrometer :icon_cheers: