Harvesting from a store bought brew...

Ive been told its possible, but by friends of mine that work with yeast for a living as scientists, not from people who brew. Could I harvest yeast from sediment in a brew (in this case Magic Hat HI.P.A), and grow it for use in my own brew? This is mostly an exercise in curiosity for me since I dont know much about yeast anyway (have only used dry). Thanks in advance for any info.

Reply to
White Trash
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Yeah, you can. Not all brews have yeast and not all of them use the fermentation starin for bottling, but in general I've had pretty good luck doing it. Make a starter wort with 1 oz. of DME and 1 pint of water. Boil it for about 10 minutes, then cool it down to the 70s. Put it in a sanitized container. Carefully pour the beer from the bottle, leaving about 1/2" of beer ion the bottom, along with the sediment. Swirl that up and pour it into your starter container. Shake the crap out of it to aerate, cover it ( I use aluminum foil) and let it ferment out for a few days. When it's done, boil up some more starter wort, this time about a qt. of water and 4 oz. DME. When cool, either pour it into your original container if it's big enough, or transfer the new batch of wort plus the contents of the origianl starter to a bigger container, and let it ferment out again. You may need to do this one more time to get a pitchable quantity of yeast. When you're ready to pitch, pour the spent wort off from the starter and pitch the yeast slurry at the bottom. I've had really good luck culturing Chimay yeast froma a bottle of Chimay Premiere (red label) and Rogue Pacman yeast from a bottle of Shakespeare stout.

----------->Denny

Reply to
Denny Conn

If the beer was pasturized, the yeast is dead, otherwise, you should be able to expand (culture) the yeast in a bottle of beer

"White Trash" wrote in news:6hq%c.8761$fF2.6515@trnddc03:

Reply to
Brewer

Yup.. most should say "Bottle Conditioned". I just used yeast from a bottle of Duvel for my Saizon Dupont clone.

Reply to
Black Dahlia Murder

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