Ringwood Yeast Extremely Weird Behaviour In Starter

[Bribie G]

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:

 

[warrenlw63]

Bribie I've had a lot of "headless" Ringwood starters. Seems to follow this pattern a lot. I usually find that swirling the demijohn produces a goodly amount of outgassing and a temporary head but then it drops to nothing.

Oddly enough this only happens with starters. In the fermenter it's always a differing story.

Warren -

 

[RdeVjun]

Wow, its like groundhog day! Had pretty much the same experience on a couple of recent occasions except I didn't measure it, although I was sorely tempted. I was using 1768 though, but one Ringwood, again from dregs (that Dragon of Tolkein's!).

I've noticed the smaller worts can be gobbled up in hours and you can miss it, the only giveaway is a burp of gas when you crack the lid and a slight scummy high water mark. I don't have oodles of it to waste in the hydrometer sample, and opening and closing it all the time is only going to end badly, so I've never actually measured one. I will do something about this though, there's too much being left to chance I feel.

I had one 1768 that seemed to die off last week, just brewed it from a split smackpack, let it finish, then refrigerated until a week ago and warmed it up gently to room temp, pitched it and then nothing. Dead as a dodo. Luckily I had another Ringwood on standby, its away with ease. One other 1768 from the same batch of starters was fine, so I'm rather perplexed.

:icon_cheers:

 

[Bribie G]

I also had that problem with 1768 a few months ago, and after a couple of days I pitched a US-05 in desperation. It was a Ruddles County lookalike and turned out drinkable but a bit strange for a UK Bitter. I've got 1768 in a Northern Bitter that I'm going to try cultivating yet again and will be watching this one like a hawk. I might even get it going today if possible as it's for a comp end of July - a UK Mild - so time's getting away. I love the diacetyl twang I always get with 1768 but it's a bloody prima donna.