Yeast harvest from a commercial beer

[brew703]

For those who do this, what's the best process? Is it as simple as sanitizing a mason jar or conical tube, pouring out most of the beer, then swirl the dregs and pour?
There are a couple commercial beers by a local brewery that I want to harvest their yeast and just want to get the process down before I start.

Do you need to sanitize water, then cool and use that to top up the jar or tube?

 

[SoCal-Doug]

In an abbreviated nutshell: Let a couple few bottles settle for a few days so the dregs are all at the bottom. Sanitize everything. Prepare a starter wort (whatever container you prefer, a stir plate definitely helps). Treat it like any other starter. Sterile, boiled, cooled, airlock, etc. Carefully pour out beers and drink them (bonus!), less the last inch or so. Swirl around the remainder and pour it into your starter wort. Cross your fingers and do the cell multiplication dance for good luck. That's about it.

Success depends on whether your dregs were fresh enough to contain sufficient live cells. You may need to do a second or third cycle of starter on it to really get it built up.

Try it with a couple bottles of Allegash White. It's a fantastic house yeast for wheats and wits (rumor says its a blend). If the bottles purchased are less than a few months old, the culture takes off like a banshee. Be forewarned though, fermenting with that yeast requires 30% to 50% headspace. It's voracious.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Sniped. This ^

 

[brew703]

In an abbreviated nutshell: Let a couple few bottles settle for a few days so the dregs are all at the bottom. Sanitize everything. Prepare a starter wort (whatever container you prefer, a stir plate definitely helps). Treat it like any other starter. Sterile, boiled, cooled, airlock, etc. Carefully pour out beers and drink them (bonus!), less the last inch or so. Swirl around the remainder and pour it into your starter wort. Cross your fingers and do the cell multiplication dance for good luck. That's about it.

Success depends on whether your dregs were fresh enough to contain sufficient live cells. You may need to do a second or third cycle of starter on it to really get it built up.

Try it with a couple bottles of Allegash White. It's a fantastic house yeast for wheats and wits (rumor says its a blend). If the bottles purchased are less than a few months old, the culture takes off like a banshee. Be forewarned though, fermenting with that yeast requires 30% to 50% headspace. It's voracious.

I'll have to see if I can get Allegash here. Not sure I've seen it. Not really into Wit's or Wheats. But I wouldn't mind trying Allegash.
I have some 50ML tubes on the way. Should be here Saturday.
When using the tubes I wouldn't need to top up with sterile water? I would not be able to make the starter this weekend. Probably not til next weekend. I plan on brewing a blonde and use the wort from the boil for my starter. It will clock in around 1.045 so I'll probably add a little water to get it down to 1.040.

 

[RPh_Guy]

50mL tubes are too small for a starter to pitch directly into beer.

However, they can be used for long-term yeast storage.
Storing in beer from starter wort is perfectly fine. No reason to top-up, especially with water. You want to minimize handling to reduce risk of contamination.
Normal/isotonic saline is great for long-term storage, but smaller tubes (5-20mL) would be more convenient.

 

[hopness monster]

I just did it with Sierra Nevada pale ale. I poured 3 bottles into glasses. Sanitized 3 pieces of foil, covered them and while I was waiting for them to come to room temperatures made a starter with a low gravity (1.010). I swirled the bottles and poured them in to a 40ml starter and covered with sanitized foil. After that fermented out I jumped it up to a 160ml starter of 1.010 wort and fermented that out. Then I calculated the starter size for 5 gallons of a 1.030 beer and stepped it up to that amount. Starter for that was 1.036. I pitched it into 5 gallons of cooled wort and let it go. Worked great.

 

[couchsending]

What are the beers you’d like to try to harvest yeast from?

I’d suggest flaming the lip of the bottle at least once before pouring dregs into say 200ml of 1.020 starter wort.

 

[brew703]

What are the beers you’d like to try to harvest yeast from?

I’d suggest flaming the lip of the bottle at least once before pouring dregs into say 200ml of 1.020 starter wort.

Parish Brewing Ghost in the Machine
Port Orleans Gleason IPA

 

[snowveil]

Parish Brewing Ghost in the Machine
Port Orleans Gleason IPA

Looking at pictures on Untappd, they look like yeast starters already so you can just go head and pitch them into 5 gallons

Kidding!

When I culture from bottles I keep it as simple as possible. I heavily clean a pint size mason jar, then mix up some DME and water in it to ~1.030 (10 grames DME per 100ml). Hit it with a drop or two of defoamer (very important if you're using this method), then toss it in the microwave until it boils. Then bring it out of the microwave, toss a mason jar lid on it, and let it cool. If I had a pressure cooker/canner I'd do this by just making a bunch of wort starter jars and keeping them until I'm ready to use them. Once it's cool and you're ready to capture your bottle dregs, flame the lip of your bottle and the lip of your mason jar and dump the dregs in.

I then re-cap the jar LOOSELY so co2 can escape but dust and other contaminant carrying stuff can't get in. If your mini starter appears to take off, just step it up to a larger starter and go from there.


This isn't necessarily the "best" method for culturing yeast but it requires no special equipment and is quick/easy.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Parish Brewing Ghost in the Machine
Port Orleans Gleason IPA

Note that there is an existing thread about cloning the former, as I suggested there you may want to use Braufessor's NEIPA as a starting point and tweak from there. Do you have any evidence that Parish use a house strain? As I say in that other thread, back in 2014 Conan yeast was considered pretty much canonical for NEIPAs, so I'd use something like WLP4000 as a starting point.

 

[brew703]

Note that there is an existing thread about cloning the former, as I suggested there you may want to use Braufessor's NEIPA as a starting point and tweak from there. Do you have any evidence that Parish use a house strain? As I say in that other thread, back in 2014 Conan yeast was considered pretty much canonical for NEIPAs, so I'd use something like WLP4000 as a starting point.

I have no clue what they use. Both breweries are tight lipped but I like both and just figured I would try and harvest so dregs and give it a shot.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I'd try Braufessor's with Conan as a starting point, and see how you get on. One big problem with commercial breweries is that many don't use the production yeast for bottling, they condition with a phenolic wine yeast which is no good for making beer.

 

[couchsending]

Parish Brewing Ghost in the Machine
Port Orleans Gleason IPA

You could try harvesting from Ghost but it being a double IPA the likelihood of getting a successful fermentation from that yeast won’t be as high as if you were to harvest from say a Pale Ale they make. The higher alcohol puts stress on the yeast and often times breweries will dead end a pitch with a highly hopped double IPA (or any higher ABV beer) and then order a new pitch. It is rare for a brewery to harvest from a higher Abv beer they usually plan production around harvesting from lower alcohol fermentation.

 

[brew703]

You could try harvesting from Ghost but it being a double IPA the likelihood of getting a successful fermentation from that yeast won’t be as high as if you were to harvest from say a Pale Ale they make. The higher alcohol puts stress on the yeast and often times breweries will dead end a pitch with a highly hopped double IPA (or any higher ABV beer) and then order a new pitch. It is rare for a brewery to harvest from a higher Abv beer they usually plan production around harvesting from lower alcohol fermentation.

You could be right. I'll give it a try and see what happens.

@Northern Brewer I've harvested before using the Braufessor method. It works and I'll be going that route again using Conan and 1318. Right now I have an entire shelf in my fridge of harvested yeast. Wife is complaining and most of the yeast is over a year old. Gonna be dumping those and starting over.

 

[brewswithshoes]

I do this quite often with Allagash White as I can’t get it here and occasionally bring home a 4 pack when traveling. You’ll need to step this up a few times to get to pitching quantities, but it works well. I would emphasize the sanitation aspect of each step up. I personally think I have good procedures but one build up time I did this I got a weird flavor. Didn’t ruin the beer but definitely had a different taste.

I decided not to reuse that yeast harvest. Started a new build up process with a new four pack and was HYPER emphatic with sanitation and didn’t have any issues. I’ve had good experience reusing the yeast for a few batches.