First attempt at bottle culturing

[MyQul]

Harvested the dregs from two bottles of Brakspear Triple today to try to culture up

Ideally you need a stir plate and a Erlenmeyer flask. I have neither. Nor can I afford to buy either of them (even making my own stir plate would cost about £20) so I used a 500ml coopers pet bottle. I came across this youtube vid on how to use a pop/water bottle to make starters and culture up yeast.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UGJ_b-MfbE[/ame]

 

[Slid]

Hi MyQul

Given that yeast have at least a 3 billion year start on the "stir plate and a Erlenmeyer flask", I'm going to back them this time.

:rofl:

Absolutely sure you know what you are doing and on a serious note, I expect it will turn out well.

 

[Niman]

out of curiosity

i must admit i have the yeast book as well (got a good deal on kindle format)

only read a bit so far

but looking at the video u posted ,,,,for the time and effort involved is it worth it? after all a pack of yeast is a few quid.


and im asking this as someone who tends to go out of his way to over complicate things ..as we do other wise we all would be buying fizzy disco **** and loving it

 

[Niman]

bloody hell imperial stout make u want to read

just bought for the love of hops

 

[MyQul]

out of curiosity

i must admit i have the yeast book as well (got a good deal on kindle format)

only read a bit so far

but looking at the video u posted ,,,,for the time and effort involved is it worth it? after all a pack of yeast is a few quid.


and im asking this as someone who tends to go out of his way to over complicate things ..as we do other wise we all would be buying fizzy disco **** and loving it

Apart fro the fact I enjoy doing it, yes a packet of dry yeast is just a few quid (although I'm tight enough to want to spread the cost), but if you culture up from the bottle you can get hold of various brewery's yeast strains. The yeast labs liquid yeast cost about £7 so I'd rather try to culture up from a bottle. Plus you get the beer from the bottle to drink too :party:

 

[MyQul]

After about four days in my coopers PET 'culture' bottle with 100ml of 1.020 wort I think ''something' is happening. As there is now something on the bottom of the bottle Whether this 'something' is grown yeast or simply the trub from the dme I'm not sure. On faith that it is actually growing I have added a further 100ml of 1.020 dme to my culture bottle :pray:

 

[MyQul]

Had a small mishap yesterday. Due to being far too over enthusiastic with squeezing the bottle, a very small hole appeared in it. So I transferred everything to a new 500ml bottle.
Unfortunately about half an hour after transferring I noticed there was still a bit of yeast stuck to the bottom of the original bottle with the hole. Not having grown that much anyway and not wanting to ris infection to try to get this yeast out and into the new bottle, I decided to repeat step 2 and added another 100ml of 1.020 wort.

There is a silver lining in this however as earlier in the day I re-hydrated some yeast for the brew I had put into the fermenter to no-chill the previous day. I normally re-hydrate at 40C.
Whilst making up the 1.020 wort I had a bit of a light bulb moment. When I re-hydrate at 40C, it get's the dried yeast going really quickly. So after boiling the 1.020 wort for 15 mins to sterilize I only cooled it to 40C and put it in the bottle with the other 200ml
This seemed to have worked really well as previously in the bottle was a thin (may be 1mm) layer of possibly yeast, possibly trub in the little crenellations of the bottom of the bottle. This morning there was a layer (again may be 1mm) but covering almost all the bottom of the bottle.
The layer was also stratified with the teenest bit of trub underneath what is obviously yeast

Success!!:party: It's definatley working.

I just now have to grow this this small amount up into a pitchable amount.

 

[Mark1964]

ideally wort or dme needs to be at 1.040. Ive cultured from dozens of bought bottles and 100g of DME in 1 litre of water is fine and works well with or without a stir plate. I just use old sterilised coke bottles

 

[MyQul]

ideally wort or dme needs to be at 1.040. Ive cultured from dozens of bought bottles and 100g of DME in 1 litre of water is fine and works well with or without a stir plate. I just use old sterilised coke bottles

Now that I've got a workable amount of yeast I will be cold crashing the 500ml bottle I'm using at the moment, decanting off the spent wort then stepping up to 250ml of 1.040

The reason I've used 1.020 wort (for three steps, although the third step was me being super cautious) was because of the miniscule amount of yeast I got out of the brakspear triple bottles. It was such a small amount in fact I couldn't even see any in the bottle and was just going on faith there was any in there and from the fact it said 'bottle conditioned' on the bottle as well as having read other people had cultured up from this beer on other forums. Everything I found on the 'tinerweb stated to start with 100ml of 1.020 dme wort, and as this is the first time I've done this, I just followed the recommended method

 

[Mark1964]

just be careful its not the secondary yeast what they use at the bottling stage. Ideally it wants to be primary yeast your cultivating. Try thwaites nutty black for stouts and thwaites also use that strain in their bitters

 

[MyQul]

Everything I could find on forums said that the strain in the triple is the primary strain - guess I could email brakspear and ask them.

Thanks for the tip on the thwaites, as Thwaites Wainrights is one of my favourite non-dark beers. Tried making it once but it was too dry because I used notty but other than that it was nice. Have you cultured up this particular strain?

 

[Mark1964]

yes many times there are a few more bottled beers with strains that will culture London pride and a few others. Could do with a big list really

 

[johnnyboy1965]

ideally wort or dme needs to be at 1.040. Ive cultured from dozens of bought bottles and 100g of DME in 1 litre of water is fine and works well with or without a stir plate. I just use old sterilised coke bottles

1.040 is too high a gravity, don't forget that you want the growth stage of yeast not the fermenting stage. 1.020 is better, IMO

 

[MyQul]

yes many times there are a few more bottled beers with strains that will culture London pride and a few others. Could do with a big list really

I actually have a big list that I found on another forum (hope the original compiler doesn't mind me reproducing it here):

"Here's a list I've been compiling of bottle-conditioned beers which are believed to contain the primary strain. I'm sure there are many more which I've missed, and perhaps some of these listed contain a secondary bottling strain. As always, I'm eager for corrections and rebuttals."

Adnams (mini-kegs contain the primary dual-strain, but bottles do not)
Brakspear Oxford Gold, perhaps Triple as well
Cantillon (classic source for diverse lambic cultures)
Chimay
Coniston Bluebird Bitter
Coopers
Courage (some)
D'Achouffe
DeDolle (excellent Belgian multi-strain)
DuPont (classic saison culture, but reportedly a triple-strain, results vary)
Duvel (probably contains primary strain, some dispute)
Fullers Bengal Lancer and 1845 (extremely popular)
Gales Prize Old Ale (classic primary strain, but so old it's likely dead)
Hook Norton (some Flagship IPA and Double Stout bottles are believed to contain primary strain)
Hopback Summer Lightning
Itchen Valley Godfathers
Kindl Weiss (good Berliner Weiss lacto blend)
Marble?
Maredsous (yes-primary, but same as Duvel)
Marstons (some: Oyster Stout or Tesco's IPA?)
Morland Hen's Tooth
Ommegang
Orval (excellent blend of Belgian primary strain + brett)
Ridgeway Bad Elf, Lump of Coal, probably others (brewed by Hepworth, same primary dual strain used in bottles)
Ridleys (some)
Rochefort
Samuel Smith Stingo
Schneider Weiss (supposedly the only hefeweizen bottled with primary strain)
Sharps (some, perhaps the only way to obtain historic Morrells strain)
Shepherd Neame Spitfire and 1698
Sierra Nevada
St. Austell Proper Job and Black Job
Tesco's "Finest Belgian Abbey Ale" by the Huyghe Brewery
Thomas Hardy (some)
Thwaites (some)
Unibroue (a Belgian-style brewery in Canada, very spicy, a mutation of Chimay?)
Westmalle
Westvleteren
Widmer Hefeweizen (not a true Hefeweizen strain, Americanized version of historic Zum Uerige alt strain)
Worthington White Shield (probablya dual-strain: classic Worthington brewery yeast + Coors' version of Bass Burton yeast)
Wye Valley (filtered but then bottle-conditioned with fresh, primary, single-strain)
Youngs Special London Ale

 

[Mark1964]

nice one ive done about 12 off that list and they all worked well

 

[MyQul]

Whilst buying a few HB supplies in wilko yeasterday I also bought some yeast nutrient. I've never used yeast nutrient before.

My little culture was also due for a step up to 250ml 1.040 yeasterday too. The instructions on the nutrient say 1 heaped teaspoonful per gallon. So I put the end of a teaspoonful in with the wort.

This morning when I checked the culture there's loads of yeast in there now, little bubbles rising through the wort and loads of off gassing :)

I think pitching the culture into 40c step up wort and combining it with nutrient really boosts things. I could of course be wrong as I've nothing to compare it to - but pretty pleased with the way things are going so far

Edit: Been doing a bit of googling on what temps starters should be and they should ideally be about 23C - so will stick to that from now on

 

[MyQul]

Doing the last step up today (2L/1.040). One benefit of it being feckin freezing outside is, I boiled the step up wort for 15min to sanitize and previously I've been leaving it overnight to cool. But it so cold outside, I put the wort outside in a couple of jars about an hour ago and it will be at room temp in about another hour