Reusing yeasties

[Sly Fox]

I've been looking at various discussions about reusing yeast lately, and it seems to me that people are overcomplicating things a bit - all this talk about having to pitch to a brew of higher O.G, only reuse it 3 times, washing the yeast etc.

To give a bit of background, whenI was a lad I started brewing with a couple of kits, and was fairly disappointed with the results from dried yeast - it seemed to eat all the sugar leaving thin, dry tasting beer. A local home brewing curmudgeon suggested that dried yeast always did that, so I should grow up yeast from a bottle conditioned beer, which I did. I soon got onto brewing with extract, and before long doing my own mash, all the while reusing yeast slurries from previous brews. I brewed every week or so for about 3 years, before I had to put brewing more or less on hold while I was at Uni. This entire time, although my method was on the happy go lucky side of sterile, I never had a sour batch, and never saw a stuck fermentation. I brewed everything from low alcohol milds, unboiled medieval "ales" through to braggots and barleywines.

After Uni I started brewing again, with malt extract this time, but started using dried yeasts - S-04 and Nottingham mostly, but also a few wheatbeers and american ales with other yeasts, and have been very satisfied with the results. However, the cost of yeast has increased, so I've been reusing slurries again, so decided to check online to see if people are doing it the way I used to. This is when I found that my yeast harvesting method was apparently very :nono: and I should by rights have been brewing all manner of sours, funky beers, vinegars and :sick:

Question is, what went right? :wha:

 

[robsan77]

Dare I say it but it could just be a matter of perception. A lot of folks here are really striving for the best and consistent results possible and where your methods may well have produced good drinkable beer, they could perhaps have been even better.

 

[Fil]

U must have had some huge fermenting buckets to cope with 3 years worth of sediment build up.. tho joking aside, its the method used by most brewers before understanding of micro organisms led to modern sanitation practices.. And its great it working so well for you.


im still learning about these fascinating wee beasties,
but with a continual brewing program every 3 weeks your starting with a healthy population of the good guys each brew so any wild interlopers arnt gonna get a foot hold. If u had started splitting and brewing concurrent brews with fractions of a slurry batch taking it from under beer handling and exposing to air more and everything perhaps you would have noticed some degradation in one or more child batches or their decedents??

However when trying to work with small samples for longer term storage and later revival and use, the sterile practices are more crucial as your not starting with an established yeast population and are creating an initial free for all for microorganisms in the new food media.


So in the light of your recent reading are you gonna change practices?

 

[Sly Fox]

Well, I'd certainly agree with the consistency thing - it was never a concern of mine making homebrew, it was a different batch every week. When I worked at a microbrewery we had customers who drank pint after pint of our bitter every evening, and would notice the tiniest variation, and be none too happy about it. With homebrew, I liked variety, and indeed, there have been times when my brewing becomes more consistent - an endless cycle of the same recipe for bitter, and those have been the times I've started to loose interest in it a bit.

I usually only saved about a pint of slurry and kept it in the fridge in a pop bottle. Would always kick off the fermentation like a boss. What I'm doing now is reusing the yeast for 3 brews, and going up the O.G every time, with about a pint of slurry. To be honest though, I might keep it going longer and seeing what happens if I go down O.G and whatnot.

There was something nice about having one yeasty friend who did the brewing, you get to have a more personal relationship with it, rather than it being a commodity to be thrown away. I enjoyed the (extremely hippy) book "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers" by Stephen Harrod Buhner, he discusses how yeasts were cultivated and cared for before the advent of microbiology, and the various traditions and superstitions associated with it. Seemed much more fun to be trying to invite the Bryggemann into your brewhouse than to be having scientists in a lab doing all the work.