Yeast cultures from real ale?

[Darcey]

Hello everyone!

I have been trawling the internet for a bit now trying to find a consensus on harvesting a yeast culture from real ale. Firstly I should point out that I am a cellarman and have access to alot of different real ales in cask and their resulting sediments etc.

My question is, is it possible to take a sample of beer / fresh unsettled beer / cloudy beer / sediment etc and culture it in to a usable yeast? I have done this before using demi's DME and bottle yeast (chimay red), but should I try it from a cask beer?

I am aware that a lot of micros use openly available yeast strains but something from Youngs? Taylors? Fullers? or my local Robinsons etc.. ive got an open book of beers I can order?

Has anyone tried it!? If not any suggestions how to do it and I'll be the Guinea pig!

Darcey

 

[evanvine]

Yes, I've done it many times Darcey, the ideal sample is from fresh unsettled beer.
Make up a couple of pints of DME such that when you add a pint of the beer the OG is 1040ish.
I use a demijon + mag stirrer, it can take a few days before results can be seen!

 

[Darcey]

9 Months later.. I actually did this with Fullers London Pride, worked a treat!

 

[evanvine]

9 Months later.. I actually did this with Fullers London Pride, worked a treat!

:thumb:
Have successfuly used yeast cultures from my freezer at over 2 years old.

 

[Reburner]

9 Months later.. I actually did this with Fullers London Pride, worked a treat!

Can you tell us step by step how you did it please?

 

[Mark1964]

We don't use dme any more but use wort. It's a lot cheaper we used bottle conditioned beers like fullers and brakespear. You really need a mag stirrer to help with the cultivation of the yeast.

 

[Darcey]

9 Months later.. I actually did this with Fullers London Pride, worked a treat!

Can you tell us step by step how you did it please?

Yeah, its on this forum somewhere but people didnt reply to my topic!

Basically I got a 1g demijohn cleaned and sanitised it thoroughly, boiled up aprox 200g of DME to to make a wort @~.0040 aprox 4pints worth then before tapping and venting the cask I cleaned and sanitised the tut and shive as well as the tap rolled the barrel around to get all the sediment moving quickly tapped and took 2 pints worth of beer added direct to the DJ and left with an airlock at 20c for about 5 days, before pitching I tasted the beer the yeast had created and it was fine :thumb: so poured off most of the excess and pitched the sediment and part of the remaining beer in to 25l of wort. Fermented fine.

D