Thanks for posting.
Very interesting concept.
I'd be very interested to see this explored more thoroughly, as it seems quite an amazing phenomenon if it truly allows safe/clean and strain-true re-use of yeast months/years later.
I was tempted to say go and get fucked that these bozo's can happily re-use their yeast without significant issues with infections and "wild" mutations, after i've just gone through almost 6 months of multiple infection issues. I was thinking that if i've had these troubles already, then introduce some air-dried yeast, i'm gonna successfully get 1 brew a year into the bottle/keg!
However, i'm happy to more reasonably assume that given this has been used for years/centuries, there obviously must be something solid happening here.
The main question is probably how reliably can it allow the "clean" re-use of a particular strain of yeast?
Obviously there's a big difference between re-using some random/generic yeast that, say, 2 out of 3 times will be infection-free or at least infection minimised (would it be any different to simply using bakers' yeast off the supermarket shelf?); as opposed to maintaining consistent specific strain characteristics and being consistently infection-free.
Man, Yob is gonna be pissed when he finds out he didn't need to do all that freezing rubbish!
EDIT: bit disappointing the author went to all the trouble of detailing how he built the wooden ring, but no mention of actually using it, let alone the important question of yeast performance afterwards.
Makes it look a little like all hype and sales pitch, with no actual follow through.
What, me cynical? Nahh
h34r: