For those calculations that say that you have no viable liquid yeast after a few months, I say “neener neener”. I just successfully spun up a starter of WLP037 that was nearly a year old, and it seems to be doing great.
Full blog post (with pictures and video! ;)) - bringing yeast back from the dead.
broken link :o ;D
Good grief. That’s twice in a row that I’ve done that! Need to preview my links, no?
Sorry about that - the link is fixed.
I’ve successfully used 3 1/2 year old WY3522.
We have a new leader in the clubhouse! My buddy Matt has done two year old yeast… 3.5 year old takes the cake, I’d say.
It was a year and a half old when my LHBS gave it to me rather than toss it. It sat in the back of my fridge unnoticed to another 2 years. When I discovered it, I decided I had nothing to lose but a bit of DME if I tried to start it up. Started with 1 qt. of 1.020 wort and stepped up a couple times with stronger wort.
In 2011. I gave a guy in our local club a six-year old slant of Brewtek CL300 Belgian ale yeast. He made a starter, and it took off in a week. After he brewed with it, I got some of the slurry back and made a killer tripel with it.
WINNER!
I loved CL300. Seems like it was Westmalle yeast. What do you think?
And now, we have six years. Though, to be fair, a slant is a little different than a vial of liquid yeast.
Probably not THAT different, but still…
If anything, I’d think it would be more fragile. The recommendation is to reculture slants every 6 months. chumley, did you do that?
No, I did not reculture the slant. It was straight from the lab.
Yes, it did seem a lot like Westmalle yeast, in regards to taste. I bought it after reading an old Zymurgy article where tripel wort was made at a local brewpub, and split between 8 or 9 different yeast varieties. The CL300 was the taste panel winner.
So even more impressive, though really, six years already boggles the mind.
I love good Belgians. Would love a chance to try this yeast.
As long as it is kept aseptic, a slant is definitely less fragile. The culture grows in the presence of O2, and it does not lie in its own waste. I have subcultured slants that were two years old without any problems. I have maintained cultures on slant for over a decade. Granted, the cultures were periodically subcultured, but I do not believe that I subcultured more frequently than once per year.
thanks for that info, Mark!
Having used it, although long ago, I’m 99% sure it’s Westmalle, which is WY3787.
Thanks for the clarification on slants. I had thought that the hardiness was supposed to be a big advantage for using that method… yay for me not having misremembered.
There were a lot of great cultures in the BrewTek collection, many of which have made their way into the collections held by White Labs and Wyeast Labs. My favorite ales strains were CL-170 Classic British Ale and CL-210 Scottish Bitter. I brewed a lot of beer with those two cultures. I am almost certain that CL-170 is the strain that was used at Young’s Ram Brewery, which is offered by Wyeast as 1768 and White Labs as WLP033 (neither propagator appears to be currently propagating this strain). I have no idea as to the origin of CL-210. It was a unique ale strain. I am certain that Chris White has CL-210 squirreled away cryostorage with all of the other cultures that he has collected over the years.
The true beauty in slant-based storage is purity, that is, as long as the slant was inoculated with a single colony or a slant that was inoculated from a single colony source (i.e., all liquid cultures need to be plated for singles before being transferred to slant). Slants are much purer than liquid cultures because they are propagated under sterile (aseptic) conditions. One thing that I really like about slants is that they can be visually inspected for contamination. Yeast, mold, and bacteria are generally noticeably different looking on solid media. One will know fairly quickly if one needs to work on one’s aseptic technique.
I’ve considered getting into slants, but have yet to do so. Maybe I should.
Slants are how we used to obtain the good strains back in the nineties (Wyeast 1450 was originally sold on slant as CL-50). BrewTek sold strains on mini-slants that were made in small centrifuge tubes. Handling those little tubes is a how I perfected the ability to remove and hold a culture tube cap with the pinky of the hand in which I hold my nichrome loop while holding one or two culture tubes in the other hand.