Oldish Liquid Yeast

[MyQul]

Not wanting to hi jack the thread but, as you appear to have a penchant for old yeast... the first brewing book I read was Greg Hughes and I seem to remember that he said that yeast can only be reused a few times (I can’t double check as a mate has ‘borrowed’ it). I have reused yeast many times and it has fermented vigorously and taste doesn’t seem impaired. I’m currently conditioning a Hefeweizen that was brewed with yeast which will have been in around 8 to 10 previous brews. What’s your view on how often it can be reused? À propos of nothing, I’ve also made some great bread with it.

I agree yeast can be used many times but eventually you do get some 'drift'. If say, you repeatedly harvest from the bottom of the fermenter eventually the yeast becomes very flocculant and as a result this lowers the attenuation. I remember a previous forumite seeing how many times he could reuse yeast and iirc it was about 11 times before the above happened.

My favourite technique is to harvest as much of the yeast cake into a jar and keep it in the fridge. Then just take a spoonful or two of this and put it in a starter whenever you want to brew. The jar of yeasts lasts many months, doing this

 

[Grealish]

I agree yeast can be used many times but eventually you do get some 'drift'. If say, you repeatedly harvest from the bottom of the fermenter eventually the yeast becomes very flocculant and as a result this lowers the attenuation. I remember a previous forumite seeing how many times he could reuse yeast and iirc it was about 11 times before the above happened.

My favourite technique is to harvest as much of the yeast cake into a jar and keep it in the fridge. Then just take a spoonful or two of this and put it in a starter whenever you want to brew. The jar of yeasts lasts many months, doing this

This plus An Ankou’s reply make sense to me. Might be why I’m not getting much banana from my wheat beers any more... I will bite the bullet and but a new pack and do a split batch fermented with the old and new.

 

[foxbat]

Not wanting to hi jack the thread but, as you appear to have a penchant for old yeast... the first brewing book I read was Greg Hughes and I seem to remember that he said that yeast can only be reused a few times (I can’t double check as a mate has ‘borrowed’ it). I have reused yeast many times and it has fermented vigorously and taste doesn’t seem impaired. I’m currently conditioning a Hefeweizen that was brewed with yeast which will have been in around 8 to 10 previous brews. What’s your view on how often it can be reused? À propos of nothing, I’ve also made some great bread with it.

Wyeast say at least 7 times and they ought to know. I find I need to switch to a different strain for a different style well before then. Sorry for butting in :)

 

[Grealish]

Wyeast say at least 7 times and they ought to know. I find I need to switch to a different strain for a different style well before then. Sorry for butting in :)

Your opinion is gratefully received. I currently have about 15 jars of yeast in the fridge so I haven’t consecutively brewed 8 wheat beers! The original pack was bought a couple of years ago. My Saison is older still.

 

[Winterbournebrewery]

Watch my link on yeast it really is worthwhile guys.

 

[Linalmeemow]

On the subject of old yeast, I had to use a jar of 6 month old slurry in an IPA recently as my supplier had forgotten to put the yeast I ordered in the delivery box and I'd foolishly not checked it properly on delivery. This was BRY97, probably a good 500-700ml of fairly thick slurry. I'd read an exbeeriment on the subject and given the lack of options I went for it - the FV was bubbling away within 6 hours or so of pitching. Yeast appears to be far more resilient than we may give it credit for...

 

[Grealish]

On the subject of old yeast, I had to use a jar of 6 month old slurry in an IPA recently as my supplier had forgotten to put the yeast I ordered in the delivery box and I'd foolishly not checked it properly on delivery. This was BRY97, probably a good 500-700ml of fairly thick slurry. I'd read an exbeeriment on the subject and given the lack of options I went for it - the FV was bubbling away within 6 hours or so of pitching. Yeast appears to be far more resilient than we may give it credit for...

That last lot of Weihenstephan I used was fermenting faster than Kveik.

 

[johncrobinson]

Re:>linalmeemow
I agree yeast is tough stuff.

I dont do it,But my father reused the same yeast for nearly 15yrs with excellent results.

He considered it his own strain and treasured it.

I however tend to use fresh yeast every time.

 

[MyQul]

Re:>linalmeemow
I agree yeast is tough stuff.

I dont do it,But my father reused the same yeast for nearly 15yrs with excellent results.

He considered it his own strain and treasured it.

I however tend to use fresh yeast every time.

15 years! Cool. That would defiantely be a house yeast. How did he harvest it/reuse it? Do you know what strain it originally was?

 

[johncrobinson]

Re MyQul
Sorry I dont know the details.I was not living at home at the time.
Some accident caused him to lose it,He told me how upset about this he was on a visit home.

As I recall it came from sloes he claimed it would ferment well at cool temps and could produce quite high ABV.
It kinda does sound a bit "like" but not ec1118

After that he used packeted yeast.

 

[Chris17]

So I pitched the yeast mentioned in my original post just under 2 weeks ago. After my initial concerns regarding the age/viability of the yeast a very substantial Krausen developed within one day after pitching, which settled my worries.

Last night I had to move my FV (we have freinds staying so had to get it out the spare room!). So I replaced the blow off tube with an Airlock and took the opportunity to take a hydrometer reading. The hydrometer reading was 1.022. Considering the OG was only 1.042, this seems quite high to me for after almost 2 weeks? What do you guys think? I don’t usually take hydrometer readings during fermentation. I usually just give it 2-3 weeks and the final gravity always seems to end up close to what was expected.

I don't plan on bottling for another week so is there anything you guys would suggest? I have read about 'rousing up' the flocculated yeast layer to give the cells a bit of a kick start again, what do you guys think of doing that?