I got a case of Mirror Pond and noticed there’s some sediment in the bottles. I am not sure if this is what they ferment with or if it’s even viable. just think it would be fun to experiment. Does anyone have a good procedure (or direct me to one)for trying to grow yeast from a small sample?
Flame the lip of the bottle. Add a small amount of weak wort. Cover with tin foil. Wait a day or two. Step up. Probably double the volume with each step.
You could do the second step right in the bottle if there’s enough space, but you’ll need to move to a flask or jar at some point.
more or less what joe senior says,
at ~ 50ml of well aerated 1.020 wort to the bottle after flaming the lip. you could use an air lock so you could monitor activity more easily. Once you’ve got activity I’d transfer to 500ml 1.030 wort in a big container. If it’s going well by then you could probably pitch that into a small batch or low gravity 5 gallon, perhaps with a 1 liter step although I suspect you wouldn’t get much from that step.
Should i do the same with several bottles, or combine into one?
you could. either do several exactly like that and evaluate each one at stage two or get more wort, like 100 or 200 ml and pitch the dregs from 3 or 4 bottles in. I’d use a mason jar or jug for that first step in that case. remember you have to open, flame, decant, pitch. all before you drink. if you are doing a whole 6 pack you should probably have a couple helpers working on the drinking step with you.
The wife “helped” the last time I stepped up some Bell’s yeast from the bottles.
If it were me, I’d do the first steps in each of the bottles separately. This way if you pick up any contamination you can isolate it to one bottle before you blend it in with everything else. Any funny smells or pellicle and don’t step up those bottles.
This gets me thinking. do you suppose the Flaming Lips were homebrewers?
“She don’t use jelly” is about keg lube.
I have not stepped a culture up from bottle in a long time, but the information that you have been given is solid. I usually just get the dregs from a bottle started in 40 milliliters of autoclaved wort, and then plate for singles these days. That way, I know that I am guaranteed to have a clean culture.
If you’re only doubling the wort volume in each step, not all of the cells will reproduce. Isn’t that not such a good thing for steps down the line?
yes. You should jump by a factor of 10 so 50 ml, 500ml, the next step would be 5000ml if you were playing it safe. pitch less than half of that at high krausen and save the rest for more starters down the road.
A step rate of 10-to-1 is conservative enough to prevent intruders from crashing the party.
What’s the max you would take it with highly sanitary conditions (unlike I have ever)
I used to step 32:1 almost every time that I made a starter. Back then, my first-level starter from slant was 30ml (1oz) of autoclaved 5% w/v wort, which I pitched into 32ozs of boiled and cooled wort. Today, I usually step 15:1 or 25:1.
Do you think 1.020 is too low for making starters?
I use that for my first step, then go up to the 1.040 range on subsequent steps.