My plan is to make a Saison this summer and use the yeast I collect from a few bottles of Boulevard’s Unfiltered Wheat beer (I will make a starter, of course). That being said, how many bottles will I need to collect the sediment from in order to make a good starter? Also, are there other considerations I need to take into account?
Here’s the process I use for stepping up yeast from bottle dregs (copied from some old posts):
[quote]For the initial step, I like to do it in the bottle instead of pouring the dregs off. Transfers are the times where you run the biggest risk of contamination, so I like to make sure the culture is woken up a bit before transferring out. Sanitize the bottle and bottle opener before opening. Then sanitize the neck/lip of the bottle before pouring the beer. I like to leave about 1/2 inch of beer in the bottle, plus the dregs. this way you get any yeast that is still in suspension and not just the flocced out dregs.
I then use a sanitized funnel to add about 1/2-1 inch of 1.030ish wort. Once diluted with the remaining beer, this gives you a nice low OG of about 1.020. This is less stressful to the yeast than the typical 1.040ish starter wort we typically use. Then I cover with foil (for non-sours) or add a small stopper and airlock (for sours). I usually give the first step about 7-10 days to give the yeast plenty of time to wake up and do their thing.
From there, the general rule for stepping up a starter is a tenfold increase each step. So step two is maybe 200 mL or so of 1.035 wort, and then that can go into a normal 2-liter starter. Use your nose to tell you whether there are any problems, and taste your larger starters to ensure that you didn’t pick up any contamination along the way.
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I think that’s a biggie. If the bottling strain is known to be the primary strain you have a field ready to harvest. …but that’s a big IF. If I am not mistaken, some breweries use a separate bottling strain specifically chosen for certain attributes they desire in their finished product.
IIRC, at a HBC seminar I saw a person from Boulevard talked about how they use a bottling strain, not the fermentation strain. It was awhile ago so I might be misremembering the brewery, but its worth looking into.
It depends. Some of the German wheat beers use a lager strain at bottling for shelf stability. Some don’t, Weihenstephaner and Gutmann are said to bottle with the primary Weißbier strain.