Propagate yeast.

I have two good Belgian beers I’m going to drink today. Westmalle triple and straffe hendrik quad. What is the easiest way to propagate the yeast at the bottom?
I do not have DME. I do have corn sugar wich I can use to make a “starter”.
Any advise is greatly appreciated.

If using corn sugar, yeast nutrient is highly recommended. But, using a wort product instead of corn sugar is always preferred.

Thanks Martin. Happy Holidays.
How can I hang on to the dregs until I get DME?

You can make your own starter by mashing a small amount of malt, running off the wort, then boil as usual.

No malt either.
I have beer in the keg that’s getting old.
Can I boil off the alcohol and use that?

When properly fermented beer in a keg has little to no residual sugar for normal beer yeast to feed off of and grow.  So, no you won’t be able to use beer.

But you may be interested in this:

The dry yeast manufacturers use raw sugar (or is it molasses?) and yeast nutrients to grow their yeast. Some advertise that the yeast is gluten free, and that means they don’t use barley extract in the process.

What sugar form and how much nutrient in what form?

I believe the dry yeast manufacturers you refer to using molasses are primarily making baker’s yeast.  Same species,  but the requirements for life cycle and performance of the yeast are very different.

Another interesting read:

Duh, not.sure why I didn’t think of that.
I need short chain maltose for those little bastards to be happy.
We’ll I guess I’ll sanitize a small jar Chuck in the dregs an wait till I brew again. Which will be Thursday .

Thanks for the advise Gents.
I’ll read MF link in the mean time.

A local yeast expert that was around here before you said they use molasses. Mark is no longer active here.

How do they make gluten free yeast?

Just get some of the yeast at the bottom of your fermentor, put it in a pint jar and add some clean water… full if  you want, and put it in the refrigerator.  After about 5-7 days, take out the jar, and open the lid, pour out the water and replace with more clean water, and replace lid and put back in fridge.  Will keep for a long time in a dormant state.

Trying to propagate from a bottle conditioned beer.

Gotcha!!  You can propagate it with simple sugars, but do NOT add yeast nutrient to the batch.  Yeast are sensitive to excessive amounts of yeast nutrient.  Go-Ferm yeast hydration is ok, just not nutrients.  However, if you want, I would merely add cold distilled water to the bottle and re-cap it and put it in the fridge until you do get a chance to get some DME and work at getting the yeast re-populated.  Won’t take much, trust me.  I work for a winery that we have had filtered wine that did not have K-Sorbate added to it, take off again in a few weeks because of either just a few viable yeasts in the tank or air got to the main wine.  Gives you a chance to get the right ingredients when you get a chance.  It will keep.

You might have better info than I. I just know that baker’s yeast is grown on media like you describe and in that case growth is ALL they care about, really.  If beer yeast is really grown that way it could contribute to the adaptation problem. I use the Weihenstephan lager strain and it generally takes about six generations to come into its own  under actual brewing conditions. But for just that reason, I wouldn’t make my initial starter, when I buy a new culture, with a non-malt medium.  Might as well start getting it used to malt right there.  FWIW I generally start from liquid but have tried the dry version.  Only difference I can recall was that it was even slower in the starter and first generation, so I took the opportunity to get a fresh liquid culture at that time.
As to gluten free yeast, well, if it’s going into a gluten free wort, it might have an advantage in being pre-adapted!

The yeast are continuously feed sugar and nutrient at 1 P or less, which avoids the adaption problem.

^^^^^
Hmm.  There’s a discussion of “fed batch” vs. conventional batch propagation in Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff’ s book on yeast and their conclusion is:

“Many brewers have tried adopting the fed-batch process, but few employ it.  David Quain, coauthor of Brewing Yeast and Fermentation and longtime Bass/Coors yeast guru, was once asked if they ever used a fed-batch process.  His answer, ‘Fed batch has no place in brewing.’”

http://www.fermentis.com/brewing/industrial-brewing/faq/

“Fermentis dry yeast are propagated in fed batch systems where nutrients and Oxygen are continuously brought to the fermentation media thus enhancing the fermentability of the yeast.”

Well that’s as definitive an answer as we’ll get, as I doubt they’ll give out the composition of their media!  But I still have to wonder, “increase the fermentability” relative to what? As I mentioned, I’ve tried dry yeast, theirs in fact, and found it very sluggish compared to liquid cultures of the same strain. Thanks for finding that link!

Yeah, I don’t know.  The response was to a question about whether dry yeast are suitable for high gravity brewing.

There’s some interesting info in the link below that is possibly relevant from Dr. Clayton Clone who I believe works (or worked) at or with Lallemand.

“We recommend that the rehydrated yeast be added to the wort within 30 minutes. We have built into each cell a large amount of glycogen and trehalose that give the yeast a burst of energy to kick off the growth cycle when it is in the wort. It is quickly used up if the yeast is rehydrated for more than 30 minutes. There is no damage done here if it is not immediatly add to the wort. You just do not get the added benefit of that sudden burst of energy.”

He stated somewhere else (and this info may be in Yeast as well) that because of the way in which it is propagated Lallemand dry yeast has sufficient lipids for 3 to 4 growth cycles right out of the package.  Unfortunately the link for his response no longer works.