More tales from the crypt, this time with Wyeast as well as White Labs for a comparison of the alleged "De Koninck" strains.
Similar protocol to before - around 20ml went into 100ml of 5% DME on Sunday 10 April, then tipped off most of the supernatant and added 200ml of 10% DME on Wednesday 13 April, and then again in 10% DME at the start of brewday on Good Friday. All starters are pressure cooked before use, each 200ml gets 1 pellet of whatever hop I have kicking round the freezer - Nugget in this case - just to keep unwanted visitors away. Thoroughly shaken before inoculation and then shaken whenever I pass by (~3 times per day), incubated in my airing cupboard at a somewhat variable ~25°C (77°F).
In case you can't see, we have :
Wyeast 3655 Belgian Schelde Ale #1402157 mfg 6 June 2018 -
3 years, 306 days old
White Labs WLP515 Antwerp Ale #1077284 bb 21 January 2020
so ??mfg 21 July 2019?? Edit: just checked on
Yeastman, mfg 24 Sept 2019 -
2 years 198 days old
De Koninck Bolleke best before April 2022, kept in the fridge at home since I bought it in a bottle shop in the UK on 23 November 2021, IIRC it was in the fridge in the shop as well.
The 3655 raced away, the 515 was a bit behind but still very happy, the yeast harvested from the De Koninck bottle was always sluggish but bubbled away slowly. Ideally I would have given the harvested yeast another couple of days, but I was up against a hard deadline of going away for Easter so was kind of committed to brewing on Good Friday. Now that I'm back - there's a ring of barm in the fermenter so presumably it's made beer.
It also probably didn't help that I cooked the final DME for the harvested yeast a bit more than the other batches, but it had been slow in the previous starters which were the same as the other yeasts', I guess the bottle just didn't have the cell count.
As before: it's not ideal, don't do this - but it can be done.