Wednesday night I made a 1.7 liter starter, hit it with some O2, pitched a smack pack of 1056 and set it on a stir plate at a low RPM.
It was at high krausen when I got up for work at 6:30 Thursday morning, and I put it in the fridge before I left the house around 8:00. When I got home around 7:30 p.m., I checked the starter, and it was still fermenting (though slowly) after having been in the fridge for just under 12 hours. I don’t know how cold my fridge is, but I think upper 30’s is a good guess.
Saturday morning when I was ready to decant and pitch, I took it out of the fridge and put it out on the kitchen counter while I was sanitizing my oxygenation gear. Less than ten minutes later, there was a quarter inch thick ring of krausen around the inside of the flask, and it was bubbling pretty steadily. It couldn’t have warmed up much past the mid 40’s at that point.
Anyway, I was just surprised that this yeast was still active at such a low temperature. It makes me wonder if you could ferment a full batch with it at lager temps (not that there’s really any reason to do so).
I feel as though the culture was in pretty good shape when I pitched, and I’m going to continue the crash at high krausen method. I wonder if any other strains will behave similarly.
I’ve posted on here before that I have seen it chugging along at 45 degrees with no problems. I raised the tmep back up into the 60s but suffered no problems from it. It is strange how cold tolerant these strain is.
Wyeast 1056 is BRY 96. There’s compelling evidence that BRY 96 is the Ballantine “beer” strain that was used at the old Schalk Brothers lager brewery on Freeman Street.
NRRL Y-7407 (Siebel BRY 96)
Accession numbers in other collections: Lange 2
Isolated from (substrate): BR, Beer pitching yeast
Substrate location: Ballantine Brewery, New Jersey, USA
Comments: ID from 26S renal partial sequences.
NRRL Y-7408 (Siebel BRY 97)
Accession numbers in other collections: Lange 4
Isolated from (substrate): BR, Ale pitching yeast
Comments: ID from 26S rDNA partial sequences
Note: G.W. Lange was the brewing scientist who deposited the cultures.
I have a hypothesis why Sierra Nevada went with Siebel BRY 96; namely, Anchor beat them to Siebel BRY 97 (yes, it’s a SWAG).
Post-Ballantine flagship usage
Siebel BRY 96 = “Chico”
Siebel BRY 97 = Anchor Liberty Ale (or simply Anchor’s ale strain)
From Siebel’s web site:
"Bry 96
This is a flocculent top fermenting ale yeast from a brewery formerly operating on the East Coast of the United States. It produces a very clean ale flavor which has been well accepted in a number of breweries."
The interesting thing is that Siebel BRY 97 perfers temps in the upper 60s over the lower 60s. BRY 97 is also a true top-cropper. The photo shown below was shot at the Ballantine Ale Brewery a long time ago. That yeast strain is a true top-cropper, which means that it is not BRY 96.
Just curious why you would cold crash a starter. Since you would have an optimum environment in the starter and temp would be close to pitching why not leave on the stirplate until ready to pitch? I have done a few starters 1-2 days prior to brew day, leaving the stirplate going until then.
Making a starter is different than making beer. Allowing a starter to ferment out results in the yeast cells being in the yeast equivalent of hibernation. Yeast cells undergo morphological changes at the end of fermentation that have do be reversed during the lag phase (i.e.,cell wall thickening). Additionally, yeast cells have low ergosterol and unsaturated fatty acid (UFA) reserves at the end of fermentation. These reserves have to be rebuilt during the lag phase, which places a high demand on dissolved O2.
Pitching or stepping at high krausen is the preferred way to propagate yeast. High krausen occurs in the latter part of the exponential phase, which means that cells are still in good shape with reasonable ergosterol and UFA reserves, greatly reducing dissolved O2 demands and reducing lag time upon stepping or pitching. Reduced O2 demands at pitching preserves dissolved O2 for future yeast generations.
So how does that fare when the yeast continue to ferment at colder than normal temps as indicated above? And if one is not stepping up a starter (which I do not often as I just make a large enough starter to begin with) then aren’t we always providing the enough necessary oxygen for healthy wort aeration each time when pitching the yeast into your cooled wort?
Mark, you’ve posted this several time in other threads and I find it extremely interesting. So interesting I spent a couple of hours looking up information on the old P.Ballantine and Sons brewery this past weekend. So interesting that I used Danstar Bry-97 dry yeast in my house ale I brewed Saturday instead of the ususal Wyeast 1056 (two packs rehydrated still lagging at 63F after 48 hours so I moved it to a room that’s 68F). I wish some graduate student would do some research and full DNA mapping on these yeast strains to determine where Schlak and Ballantine may have acquired these strains.
I tried the “crash at high krausen” method with WY1968 and it was still chugging away in my 38f keezer. If 1968 won’t floc out at fridge temps, then it wouldn’t surprise me to hear any strain behave like this.
I almost never cold-crash when I pitch at high krausen. I adjust for the dilution and pitch everything into the fermentation vessel. However, then again, I never make huge starters. There’s no need to make a huge starter when pitching at high krausen. Due to the exponential nature of yeast biomass growth, the difference between pitching a 1L starter and a 2L starter is 90 minutes of propagation time after pitching. Cells that are pitched at high krausen are ready to go to war with the wort with minimal adjustment; hence, a smaller starter has already made up for the difference in cell count and surpassed the fermented out starter before it exits the lag phase.
With that said, try incubating your starters at 25C/77F. A rapid drop in temperature from 25C/77F to 1C/34F should cause the cells from all but the hardiest yeast strains to sediment. The supernatant (clear liquid above the sediment) should be decanted as soon as the starter has been removed from cold storage.
The temperature drop in my case was from the upper 60’s down to fridge temp. The yeast appeared to sediment pretty well, there was just a bit of additional (very slow) fermentation occurring for at least those first 12 hours.
The fact that it started fermenting again on Saturday morning tells me that the starter did not ferment to completion in the fridge, which is good.
Thanks for the info Mark. Would it be better then to schedule your starter to hit high krausen in time with your brew day? Say 30 hours(completely made up number) before pitching to wort?
I usually grow a starter from slant, which requires very different timing.
A White Labs vial contains a ridiculous number of yeast cells compared to an original Wyeast smack pack. It was not uncommon to smack the pack on Friday morning, pitch it into a quart or liter of starter wort that evening, and brew the following day; therefore, 24 hours is more than enough time to start a vial of White Labs yeast. In fact, one can get away with pitching the vial the night before one intends to brew.
Ha, it’s funny how you put lagers in quotes. I never thought Sierra Nevada’s lagers were very good…they are definitely an ale brewery. The vienna lager was decent that I had in the fall pack last year, but I am not a fan of the Summerfest at all; it just isn’t a smooth and clean tasting lager.
And the oktoberfest had a slight roast character to it that took me by surprise.
