Yeast Retirment

[nbpicklesno2]

After thirteen brews and several months, I have had to retire my 11g packet of Danstar Nottingham yeast. It has been replaced by these little beauties, WLP001 and WLP002 from The Malt Miller. They are currently residing with a packet of frozen peas wrapped in bubble wrap to keep them cool until I get home from work.

If anyone is interested, the Nottingham has been retired due to changes in its character through regeneration. It is now highly flocculant and sets like concrete between brews.
Also my apparent attenuation has decreased from 81 to 66 percent. This was probably due to my harvesting techniques, bottom cropping and possibly bacteria.

It also was starting to form a very good krausen which I could have used for harvesting.

Maybe I should just keep it, just for emergences, in the back of the fridge.:lol:

 

[MyQul]

After thirteen brews and several months, I have had to retire my 11g packet of Danstar Nottingham yeast. It has been replaced by these little beauties, WLP001 and WLP002 from The Malt Miller. They are currently residing with a packet of frozen peas wrapped in bubble wrap to keep them cool until I get home from work.

If anyone is interested, the Nottingham has been retired due to changes in its character through regeneration. It is now highly flocculant and sets like concrete between brews.
Also my apparent attenuation has decreased from 81 to 66 percent. This was probably due to my harvesting techniques, bottom cropping and possibly bacteria.

It also was starting to form a very good krausen which I could have used for harvesting.

Maybe I should just keep it, just for emergences, in the back of the fridge.:lol:

That's really interesting to know. Frow what I've read in the yeast book , it's so flocctuant because of the selective pressure you put on it from bottom cropping. Not sure about why it's not very attenuative anymore.

Time to pension it off then, the old chaps are probaly knackered now.

Edit: Just realized why the attenuation is so low. Apart from the fact they need zimmer frames to get about to ferment the wort. It's now so flucctuant its falling out of suspension before it has a chance to fully ferment out the wort. Yeast can only ferment wort when in suspension not when it's idling about on the bottom of your FV. Bet if you were to rouse it a couple of times uring fermentation you'd get it to give you a half decent attenuation

 

[nbpicklesno2]

I believe that to be the case.

When bottom cropping, you're not getting the active yeast in suspension only the flocculant yeast that has already fallen so the next generation will be more flocculant than the last. This why I wanted to start using liquid yeast so I could top crop therefore get a better selection.

I think the reduction in AA is down to fatigue as a little packet of dried yeast must be absolutely knackered after that amount of work.:lol:

It is also usually the case that the more flocculant the yeast is, the less attenuative it becomes. At least with freash yeast this seems to be the case. I don't know of any yeast that is highly attenuative and highly flocculant.

 

[MyQul]

. I don't know of any yeast that is highly attenuative and highly flocculant.

Me neither.

BTW, from what I've read, and if the internet is to be believed WLP001 is exatly the same as US-05, the chico strain and WLP002 is the Fullers strain. I've just started culturing up (yesterday) the Fullers strain from a bottle of 1845. Everythings looking good so far

 

[nbpicklesno2]

According to Kristian England's Yeast Strain Sources on Mr Malty, WLP001 is also one used by Sierra Nevada and if it's good enough for them...

He also backs up your other info as well although I'd never heard of the Chico Strain and I've had to Google it.

All good stuff.

 

[MyQul]

I had that Wyeast/Whitelabs strain guide for a little while. It's a fantastic resource

 

[Slid]

Now, this could be a little ill informed on my part, but I have been habitually (well twice) using one Mother brew to obtain multiple (~4) small bottles of trub yeast plus washing water for pitching straight into Daughter brews.

Yeasts used for this were Belle Saison and US 05. No issues with this methodology - about 4 Daughter brews were easily possible.

Following the advice obtained from a recent forum discussion on re-using yeast, I tried a different approach with a second US 05 sachet.

I pitched on 31 May 2015 into a partial mash brew, which leaves a huge amount of break material, and left a fair amount of beer at first racking.

Then gave it my best shot at mixing the trub, yeast and beer. Then split into 250ml lemonade PET bottles, under sterile conditions.

This yielded an incredible 11 starter bottles, saved under "Green Beer" that seem to work quite well, really, stored in the fridge. (Although the washed ones did too, TBH).

This seems to me to be a lower risk approach than using the trub from successive generations of the same source, given the difficulties of achieving lab sterility in a home kitchen.

Does anyone have any further suggestions or experiences?

 

[nbpicklesno2]

As you're no doubt aware, many microbrewerys only use their yeast for eight to ten successive brews before reordering 'their' yeast from their chosen storage facility in order to start again.

Mine pasted 13 brews but I was pushing it on purpose. That's the good thing about being a home Brewer, there is little or no longer risk either financial nor commercial.

Home brewers could and should be the experimenters within the brewing community. The further we push the limits of the accepted practices and norms, the richer we will all be.

No text I ever read, stated I could or should have pushed a small packet of dried yeast so far. If I was to believe all I ever read, I would never have done it. It is so cheap and easy to get hold of, it would be pointless.

Reading this through, I've just decided to wash it, regenerate it and continue to use it in my next brew as well.

Find that in the accepted texts.