Got a special bottle-conditioned beer you'd like to pinch the yeast from? I do. This is my 3rd successful harvest so I thought I'd throw out a how-to. It's ridiculously easy!

One-step a 1L flask, stopper, and airlock. Boil up a mini-wort of 2 cups water, 1/2 cup DME, and 1/4 tsp of yeast nutrient. Dump the wort into the sanitized flask and cover tightly with a piece of tin foil. NOTE the flask must be tempered glass to handle the heat! If you're using something else to ferment in, let the wort cool in the (covered) pot first.

Set the flask aside to cool to room temp. Meanwhile, bring the bottle-conditioned brew to room temp (if not already). Once the wort is completely cooled, carefully pour off the brew into a glass to enjoy, leaving behind the yeast. Slosh the remaining beer in the bottle to re-suspend the yeast and pour it into the flask. Button it up with an airlock filled with cheapo vodka and stash it somewhere warm!

Because there's likely very little viable yeast in the bottle, patience is a must. Signs of fermentation may take a week or more. Eventually though, you should get some krausen and bubbling in the airlock. Once the bubbling finishes, pour off the the beer and taste test. Is it good? Dump the fresh yeast into a sanitized canning jar and stuff it in the fridge. It should stay viable for up to six months or so, but it's always wise to make a starter to re-verify viability and taste.

Here's my just completed Chimay harvest. Took 5 days before fermentation started but then went crazy and grew a fine batch of yeast. Tastes just like Chimay too. Looking forward to doing a proper Trappist soon with this one. That's one-step in the canning jar, BTW...

very nice Jkarp thanks for the info

Thanks for the tutorial jkarp.

This is great, I needed it all in one outline.

4 questions:
1) Can boiled water be used in the airlock? It's a one-way passage so I don't know why vodka would have to be used, or even boiled water. I just don't have cheapo vodka on hand

2)When a new batch of beer is ready for the fresh yeast, any additional prep, besides bringing the fresh yeast to room temp and doing a test starter? Just pitch it and let it work?

3) What if I want to use the trub for this process? Does nuterient still need to be added or is there enough in the wort/slurry?

4) you refer to tasting the starter beer - does it taste good? What if it tastes bad - infection and down the drain it goes?

Thank you so much for posting the process. I want to harvest my liquid wheat yeast.

Michelle

+10 jkarp !!!!
Great info !!!

Not recommended. An airlock really isn't one-way. Any pressure differential between the flask and outside can draw the liquid into the fermenting beer. Vodka is ideal because it's harmless to the wort. Sanitizer can be used but if too much were to get pulled into the wort, you risk killing off the yeast.



That's it. If you've got enough yeast (and it smells good), you can skip the starter. I did when I re-used my Wit yeast. I had so much yeast it was instant krausen.



Here's the link to where I harvested yeast from my first Wit batch. I didn't add any nutrient. Wit yeast doesn't need any encouragement.



Yup. If the starter doesn't taste good, it's a given you won't like the beer it'll make.

This looks like the easiest and cleanest (most sanitized) way to bottom crop and I really don’t see any reason for a wash (or should I say a second wash) as long as you are careful not to get too much turb in your yeast collection bottle. I’m going to use this method when I bottle my cascade pale ale over the holiday weekend.

I do have 2 questions for you jkarp though….

1) Have you ever tried top cropping?? If so, what procedure did you use? (using the MRB kegs)

2) From what I’ve read, it looks like the lag stage is the best time to harvest yeast. For top cropping, I think it would be fairly easy, but since I don’t rack my ales, unless there is a need, how would you do this. If I had a conical fermentor, this would be a piece of cake. What I thought about doing was putting something behind the keg to tilt it forward, that way more turb would be at the front and it would be easier to harvest it at this time. Or do you think I would just clog the spout?

To be honest, I'm disinclined to open a keg mid-fermentation. Waiting for the yeast to flocculate out and grab it after bottling is just too easy (and safe) IMO.

Good stuff jkarp!

Wikify!

+1 wiki this bad boy!!
Awesome job jkarp!!!!!

Bumping this thread cause I have a question and it should be a sticky.

Do you have to use Vodka???
Is there a reason to not use Rum?

Hell no. I ran out of vodka (cheap stuff anyway) and have been using some nasty white rum I found hiding in the back of the cabinet.

Cool, I always have Rum on hand and did not really want to buy Vodka just for the Air-Lock.

Thanks for the question D Rock and the response jkarp. I’ve got a ton or rum lying around the house because we never drink it. When the vodka runs out, I’ll start using the rum

So, I harvested some Yeast from a bottle of Chimay White 6 days ago. I had signs of fermentation by day three.
But, as you may be able to tell in my crappy Cell phone Pic, Krausen is only covering about 2/3 of the surface. (Still about the same on day 6 -but still showing signs of active fermentation.)
Jkarp's nice and clear pic shows a full coverage of Krausen:

Lets see, I know I had questions...

@Jkarp,
Do you recall how long you kept it in the flask before you determined that fermentation had finished?
Was the Krausen level in your pic around the max level that was achieved?
Before putting into sterilized canning jar, would it be wise to chill the "wort" to force flocculate any yeast cells that may be in suspension?
Would it be wise to do several successive starters just for propagation purposes or should I just determine viability with a starter when ready to use and go for it?

I know, RDWHAHB!

To all, what recipes would you consider for harvested Chimay White Yeast?

My harvests have some to very little krausen. I wait until the airlock stops bubbling as an indication that fermentation is complete and then sample the beer. If it tastes good, I carefully pour off the excess beer and add a 2nd batch of cooled wort to continue growing the yeast colony. This process may take 2-3 times to get a yeast population I'm happy with. I finally pour off the excess beer and dump the yeast into the mason jar, label, and off to the fridge it goes. I don't pre-chill as the yeast pretty well flocculates on its own.

Before using a stored yeast I do another starter just to insure viability and taste to make sure nothing went "off" in the fridge.

Alright, that makes plenty of sense. Figured it would need successive growth periods. That was missing from the original post. But, of course, it should seem obvious.
Thanks

I needed that also, I want to keep my wheat yeast going as long as possible.

I used 2 cups of water to 1 cup of DME. Reading up on it, the ratios seem to vary. Does more DME = more yeast?

2 cups water + 1/2 cup DME gives a 1.040 wort. Ideal for a starter. Any more isn't healthy for the yeast from what I've read.

Great thread.

I followed this guy's 2:1 ration. 1 part DME, 2 part's water

http://beer.about.com/od/fermenting/ss/YeastStarter1_2.htm

How would too much DME be unhealthy for the yeast?

I think that a lower gravity wort would benefit bottle harvesting. But, for a smack pack starter (even a frozen/thawed one), since they have so many more gazillion cells than the slurry at the bottom of a bottle, that a higher gravity wort would be fine. However, that is just me typing out loud -still learning the ropes when it comes to starters and propagation.
Jkarp?

Check out Mr. Malty's Starter FAQ. It's got the straight scoop on starter wort quantities and gravities. FWIW, I've found many of the about.com articles are of questionable quality (not just homebrewing).

What are the temperature constraints on an Ehrlenmeyer flask ?
I did a google search looked at some lab supply companies and friggin' Wikipedia is about useless.

Have to go to work, so did not peruse this yet, but the answer may be here .

As long as it's borosilicate glass, it can be direct heated no problem.

that is really good, thanks!

Erlenmeyer flasks can take a hell of a beating. Trust me. We have heated the jams to over 300 degrees. As long as you don't cool them too fast, they are fine. In organic chem we used to melt all sorts of organic solids over open propane flames and boil solutions for hours.

great thread

I placed an order two days ago and instead of throwing down another $5+ for a Wyeast Bel-Abby II 'smack pack', I made a starter from a bottle of homebrew last night. The airlock is bubbling away on the flask.

I'm making Bel-Abby II this weekend.

My first failed harvest. Last Duvel I carried back from Belgium. It's been in the flask for 14 days and a pellicle is forming. Fortunately, Duvel is readily available in CO (which is why I did this one last), so no real loss.

You are the man .

Only been a couple hours since I took that pic and now the surface is totally covered and turning white. Those bugs work FAST!

So, would that be Pelio?

You mean Pediococcus? Yeah eaither that or Lactobacillus. I wasn't brave enough to sample before I dumped it last night but it definitely had a good lactic acid funk going on.

Whelp, I poured the beer off of my Chimay harvest and it is sour. From early on there were some small chains of white stuff on top of the wort, not a lot but they were there. I just adopted a RDWHAHB attitude toward it. Really, I had nothing to lose. So is this probably Lactobacillus? They were small millimeter wide chains. Seems like most pic that I have seen of Lacto show a more globular substance then what I had. I went ahead and added a new wort. But, I am assuming that this is a lost cause.
Jkarp?

Yeah, probably. Some Belgians are bottle conditioned with brett and/or bugs, but not Chimay, according to my sources. My Chimay harvest fermented clean as well - used it in Tripel Trouble.

The beer from my liquid wheat was actually pretty darn tasty. Full of the wheat esters. Pretty heavy on the malt, of course.
Pitched into the Sweet Eddy and have a very lively group of yeasties having a party. Smells really good.

The pour off beer actually helped me figure out that I enjoy a hoppier, less malty style of beer. I bought a few bottles of commerical beers which where pretty heavy on the malt side and just stopped enjoying them after getting half way through.

Well, I brewed and pitched with my propagated yeast today. I salvaged some Wyeast Bel Abby II from a bottle and grew it up in a flask. First, I went with a 500ml starter. When that settled out, I cooked up a 1 liter starter. It was just starting to fade a little when I pitched it this afternoon into a 1.074 dark Belgian AG I brewed. It's bubbling away fine in the garage already.

This batch came in around 4.5 gallons so I put the whole thing in a 5 gallon glass carboy hoping it won't blow the top fermenting tonight. Watching almost 5 gallons churn and spin and ferment is hypnotizing!!

Very cool, Pudge!

This might sound a little crude, but I have used plastic bottles that have been sanitized and added the left over crud from the brew after I have bottled most of it. I then add a healthy shot of pancake syrup to it. Capped the bottle and placed it in a cool dark place. It works for me but the bottles need to have an eye kept on them. I used a 12 oz. Coke bottle and it swelled up until it looked like a soft ball instead of a bottle, so use caution.
This reusable yeast has worked out pretty well, I use Safeale 04 for many brews.

Fermenter 1: Creme Ale (secondary)
Fermenter 2: Honey Dark
Conditioning: Canadian High Country
Blue Berry Ale
Red Cedar Ale
Sam Adams Taste Alike
Pilothouse
Nut Brown Peanut Ale

Question? Is it possible to harvest yeast from a unfiltered beer, such as Blue Moon?

Jkarp would be the authority on this one, but this is what I've found.

You can harvest any yeast form almost any unfiltered or naturally carbonated. But the big question is, are you harvesting the actual yeast that was used to brew the beer. For the unfiltered beers, I think you'd be safe (but again, jkarp knows more in this area), but for the beers like Sierra Nevada, that are naturally carbonated, some breweries will filter the beer, then add a different strain to when bottling. Also, the yeast used in the fermentation of blue moon is a very neutral yeast, so besides doing it for practice, I don't see a whole lot of gain by harvesting it.

Just to pick an argument with n2b...

I'd say Blue Moon is a worthy target for harvesting - Particularly if you're looking for an American wheat yeast. It's relatively new and who knows if Coors isn't doing something crafty with their yeast over the standard LHBS strains...

I also think "bottling yeast" is by far the exception over the norm. Breweries wanna make money and therefore normally use the exact same yeast throughout all their processes AND beers. Even the famous Chimay uses the exact same yeast for all beers. Where different yeast is added at bottling it's more often out of necessity than secrecy, as in to finish very high gravity beers. Orval is a good example here where brettanomyces is added to finish drying out the beer after bottling.

Here's a good (although not 100% accurate) resource on harvesting bottle conditioned yeasts.

Thanks for the help, I may give the blue moon a try just to learn the process.

Read everything, great tutorial, about the only thing I didn't see, or just plain missed, is how long you can keep the yeast viable in fridge. Is there any special care and feeding until you us it again?

I've gone 6 months and had absolutely no trouble. I always waken up any yeast in a 1L starter before use tho.

Many, many, thanks!

Quick question jkarp...

I've always used .5 L starters to wake up my harvests, never had issues and my lag has always been under 4 hrs, but I have never had any harvests that were over 2 months old. Just wondering why you go with 1L. The beer is wonderful here but in this hobby I'm always striving for better beer. Thanks in advance.

.5L, 1L, it's all good. Generally speaking, a .5L is plenty to "wake up" yeast, but a 1 - 2L starter is needed for growing the yeast population.

Has anyone used this method for harvesting their yeast? Looks straight forward enough. As the water is chilled, it should keep the yeast asleep until you make a starter for the next batch.

Wouldn't you want to grow harvested yeast slowly through these steps? You could underpitch a starter as easy as underpitching a beer which could stress the yeast.

That is pretty much what I do. With the exception this part being different: I purposely try to get as much separation as possible by putting it in the fridge for 45 minutes. Then I decant the liquid that stratified off of the sludge. I thought that this was the whole purpose of washing yeast. The sediment at the bottom is dead yeast, husks, proteins, etc... The yeast is in suspension in the liquid, thats all that I want to save. Works fine for me.

Absolutely, tho n2b wasn't talking about growing a new harvest. He asked about waking up an existing large yeast colony that's been idling for a while in the fridge.

I know that this thread is a bottle harvesting thread, but it's been bouncing between bottle harvesting and harvesting yeast form a recently brewed batch, so…

Here is my method of harvesting yeast from a recently brewed batch.

http://www.mrbeerfans.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=29655

I've been doing it this way for about 4 months now and have brewed 22 batches with harvested yeast. I'm very pleased with this method and I love using the Arizona Ice Tea bottles. Unless I come across a special recipe that I want to brew that requires a yeast strain that I don't have, I'm not planning on buying yeast at all next year.

wow jkarp chimay is exactly what i wanted to harvest, ill give this a shot!

I wish i would have seen this thread before i bought liquid yeast. Oh well now i have this as a reference to come back to when i buy liquid yeast again!

Even better, make that liquid yeast investment stretch out over a few batches!

Hey J quick question -
i noticed after doing this with a bottle of affligem noel that a lot of leftover dme and whatnot fell to the bottom. how do you collect the yeast seperate from the crap at the bottom of the vial after you pour the beer thats produced out?

Probably just some cold break proteins from the starter DME. Shouldn't be much (at least it isn't in my starters) so I don't worry about it and dump all solids in the mason jar for storage.

Where can i find one of these 1L flasks at a decent price? I'm not even sure where to go locally.

I got mine through Northern Brewer . They have $7.99 flat rate shipping on most of their items... meaning you can really load up and they'll charge only $7.99 to ship.

As for the flask, they offer yeast starter kits .

that yeast starter kit looks excellent, thanks Pudge!

The one thing that starter kit doesn't include is yeast nutrient. I have MUCH better success with harvests when nutrient is added to the starter wort.

That's the one thing I forgot to add to my latest order, DOH!

Dink always has a picture.

Google has the picture, I just know how to embed it.

i decided to give this a try. if anything, i can learn from the experience. thanks for the easy steps.

Good luck! That's the one yeast harvest that failed me.

day 2 of the westmalle experiment and there is a lot of activity. looking good so far. keeping my fingers crossed.

jkarp -- i am interested in what happened with your westmalle harvest and how/why it failed.

Have a bottle of Franziskaner in the fridge right now. Tomorrow I will place it under ultra-centrifuge to pellet the cells. Then I am going to plate them on yeast-peptone-dextrose agar and grow them over the weekend. On Monday I will re-streak the cultures to ensure isolation of yeast from other beer debris. I will then inoculate the culture into liquid YPD and grow them overnight. Tuesday they will be frozen to -80 in glycerol and my first yeast stock will be complete!

I am excited! (Obviously)

Sweet! Hope everything turns out well.

It just happens. Not enough viable yeast in the bottle I harvested. Westmalle is known as a tough one to harvest too; this from the Bottle Conditioned Beers Yeast Guide:

Westmalle

General
Probably primary strain, but often in bad condition. May need special care to give good results.
Tripel
{1} Low flocculation. Not a duplicate, but very clean with Westmalle flavour profile.

In your directions you say to let the beer warm to room temp then poor beer and take yeast from bottom. Is there a reason to warm to room temp? I like this beer as most cold, is this to not shock the yeast? I was going to open and let breath for a few minutes then poor leaving yeast to warm to room temp before using. Any input on this would help

Oh by the way I have the Priemere (Red) I like the blue better but I had read that this is easier to harvest from as the Blue's yeast has been through much more(beaten up)maybe due to abv.

Yup. So pour your brew into a glass, leaving the yeast behind and cover the bottle mouth with foil until it warms.

bump

Ummm...
Why ya Bumpin' a sticky, LJ?

crap did it for res, i didnt relize it was a sticky. now that we're here. i harvested yeast from hair of the dog's old world ale. i sort of forgot about it. am i still good to take the yeast that i did build up and reharvest it, even after a couple months?

My harvest of Wyeast 3944 Belgian Witbier™ sat in the fridge for four months and took off just fine. I would imagine that a bottle harvested yeast that was built up successfully, would be fine with a new starter. Nothing to lose but a couple of cups of DME.

Edit:
Rereading your post...
You harvested it and never built it up?

I'll ask this here since it's active. Last night I harvested some Mr. Beer stout liquid yeast from the bottom of the keg after bottling. After sitting overnight it looks like this:




Which portion should I try to save and what should I try to leave out? At the very bottom is the dead yeast, hop particles, and trub. Above that is a very thin layer of what seems to be good yeast. Then there's that darker layer that looks like waves. What is that? Above that looks like more yeast and on top of that is the bulk of the liquid with the beer and some cloudiness.

What's your guys' take on this?

Place it in the fridge for a day. It'll settle out more thoroughly.

Yeah that's what I figured, I guess I'm just impatient. I'm glad I took those pics though because I can see how it's changed already.

After 18 hours, this is more like it:




Now should I pour most of the beer out and try to swirl up just the top most layer to pour into the two jars I have waiting? What's the best COA here?

Centrifugation!! Well, for me at least. If I were you, I would sanitize a turkey baster and draw the supernatant (top layer) off the yeast cake.

A centrifuge would be nice, but not wanting to buy one or tie a string to the jar and spin it around my head for a while makes that kind of difficult.

I actually just got impatient, poured out most of the beer, and tried to pour the yeast into another jar while trying to keep as much trub and sediment in the first jar. I'll see what it looks like tomorrow and might use your idea and buy a turkey baster if need be. Cheers!

Worked for this guy...

Hahahahahaha!

You can also attach the tubes to a high speed fan or RC motor, if you are ambitious! I just use the ones in the lab, but you know, I'm not good at building things!

Wow I was just kidding, but hey all power to him. I'm not feeling that noble however. I think I'm going to get a turkey baster. Check this out:



Is that dead yeast on top of the good yeast? Usually I see the good yeast settle on top.

The yeast is on the bottom. I suppose that top layer may be proteins or other sediment. Dead yeast and live yeast have the same density and therefore will settle into the same layer. If this is a wheat beer, then it is most likely wheat.

Anybody know a website to purchase the flask. Ive been hunting and can't seem to find the same 1l flask you guys use online or locally.

http://www.morebeer.com

flask $9.95 http://morebeer.com/view_product/19890//Erlenmeyer_Flask_1000_ml

yeast starter kit w/flask $11.95 http://morebeer.com/view_product/19886//Yeast_Starter_Kit_1000_ml

Any Home Brew site should have them. Northern Brewer. Now about he shipping to Japan...

Edit:
What Dink said.

Thanks!! Companies that do not ship directly here just cost me more for shipping because I have it shipped to a third party who then ships it here. It's why when I do buy stuff I usually do it in bulk or shipping charges add up fast.

Northern Brewer has Flat Rate Shipping, $7.99. So that first leg would be reasonable.

Morebeer has free shipping on orders over $59.

Tried my first bottle harvest and I think I failed. It was in the flask for about 2 weeks. Krausen and airlock bubbling came and went. I poured the beer off the top tonight and sampled it. First off, it was super fizzy, like pouring a pop into a glass. Secondly, it tasted like cider.. a lot! So I poured it down the drain and now I'm trying again. Could it have been infection?

Not if it just tasted like cider. First, my bottle harvests are done at room temp which fluctuates a lot so the excess production of acetaldehyde is inevitable. Also, when bottle harvesting, you are not using any hops and your 'starter beer' is always going to taste sweet. What did you try to harvest?

It wasn't a sweet cidery, it was very tart. It didn't taste like beer it all, it was like I cracked open a Granny Smith Woodchuck. I was harvesting out of a Bell's Pale Ale, which is one of the beers that Bell's actually suggested to harvest from.

OK, If any Mr. Beer Fan members are heading to Japan send a PM to Brew Time and see what he needs.

My brother-in-law used to live way up in Alaska. Half my luggage was brewing supplies when going to visit.

First of all, thank you JKarp for this whole string. I used this as the basis for trying my own attempt at reconstituting yeast for the first time. Admittedly, I did things very differently as far as equipment and ingredients, but the basic process remained the same. I did this for two reasons:

1. I did not have easy access to a few of the ingredients specified in JKarp's tutorial.
2. I am cheap

Since I don't have a tempered Erlenmeyer flask (or any Erlenmeyer flask for that matter), I used a 12 oz plastic Coke bottle as my fermenter. To alleviate the pressure from CO2 buildup, I left the cap on but not tight, similar to the venting on the MB fermenter.

For my wort, I again went cheap. I did not have DME or yeast nutrient, but with some searching I found that the main ingredients in yeast nutrient are certain nutrients found in malt sugar and citric acid. I used a small amound of booster and lemon juice. To round out the wort, I also used some maple syrup - note: actual maple syrup, not the fake plastic stuff. I prepared the wort in the same way as JKarp recommended, but added the booster before boiling and the maple syrup like you would do with LME.

For the yeast, I took one for the beermaking team, and finished a bottle of Chimay Cinq Cents (750 ml, of course). In advance, I appreciate all of your sympathy on that endeavor :-P I harvested as per JKarp's directions.

Sanitizing was done by the book, OneStep on everything for 10 minutes.

I got nothing for the first 3-4 days. By day 5 I had robust krauzening. I harvested on day 13 after sampling the "beer." The taste I got resembled mead, most likely because of the sugars I used, but it was more than pleasant, so I added it to a MB Abbey Dubbel recipe on the 16th as my yeast. I've tasted it once so far during the fermentation process and everything seems to be working well (no 'off' tastes, etc.).

Again, thanks JKarp for giving me everything I needed to make this work, and I hope others find this useful.

Weeellll....
The sugars in DME are Maltose -a complex sugar. Booster is dextrose -a simple sugar. It is generally agreed upon that yeast should be built up in an environment similar to what they will be fermenting.
You have inured the yeast to simple sugars. Hopefully everything will be fine. But, you may end up with a low attenuation. Only time will tell.

Yep. Building starters with simple sugars can be bad. Yeast starts fermenting the simplest first, and then the more and more complex sugars until there is nothing left that the yeast can ferment. As the sugars get more complex the yeast has to produce enzymes in order to help the fermentation along. If you build your starters with too many simple sugars you can condition the yeast to not produce these enzymes. You can wind up with yeast that cannot fully ferment your beer. So.. Um... Yeah. That's all I have to say about that.

According to the label, Booster is primarily maltose, although it does contain smaller amounts of some simple sugars, namely glucose. Thus far, it tastes fine, but I'm at least 7-10 days from bottling. If it turns out to be an epic failure, I will post what I come up with.