Harvesting yeast from commercial bottles

[Sye]

There used to be one knocking about. I'll see if I can find it.

That would be great thanks.

[Sye]

Here's what we have so far, (from this thread) of current commercially available beer we can pinch the yeasties from.??

1. Fuller's =1845
2. St Austell =Admiral's Ale/Proper Job
3. Skinner's =Betty Stog's
4. Gales =HSB
5. Youngs =London special bitter
6. Worthingtons =White Shield
7. Corsendonk =Belgian Abbey Brown Ale (Wyeast 3538-PC)

[legion]

This is Seymour's list of yeast sources:
Adnams (mini-kegs contain the primary dual-strain, but bottles do not)
Brakspear Oxford Gold, perhaps Triple as well
Cantillon (classic source for diverse lambic cultures)
Chimay
Coniston Bluebird Bitter
Coopers
Courage (some)
D'Achouffe
DeDolle (excellent Belgian multi-strain)
DuPont (classic saison culture, but reportedly a triple-strain, results vary)
Duvel (probably contains primary strain, some dispute)
Fullers Bengal Lancer and 1845 (extremely popular)
Gales Prize Old Ale (classic primary strain, but so old it's likely dead)
Hook Norton (some Flagship IPA and Double Stout bottles are believed to contain primary strain)
Hopback Summer Lightning
Itchen Valley Godfathers
Kindl Weiss (good Berliner Weiss lacto blend)
Marble?
Maredsous (yes-primary, but same as Duvel)
Marstons (some: Oyster Stout or Tesco's IPA?)
Morland Hen's Tooth
Ommegang
Orval (excellent blend of Belgian primary strain + brett)
Ridgeway Bad Elf, Lump of Coal, probably others (brewed by Hepworth, same primary dual strain used in bottles)
Ridleys (some)
Rochefort
Samuel Smith Stingo
Schneider Weiss (supposedly the only hefeweizen bottled with primary strain)
Sharps (some, perhaps the only way to obtain historic Morrells strain)
Shepherd Neame Spitfire and 1698
Sierra Nevada
St. Austell Proper Job and Black Job
Tesco's "Finest Belgian Abbey Ale" by the Huyghe Brewery
Thomas Hardy (some)
Thwaites (some)
Unibroue (a Belgian-style brewery in Canada, very spicy, a mutation of Chimay?)
Westmalle
Westvleteren
Widmer Hefeweizen (not a true Hefeweizen strain, Americanized version of historic Zum Uerige alt strain)
Worthington White Shield (probably not primary strain, but a nice high-attenuating strain anyway)
Wye Valley (filtered but then bottle-conditioned with fresh, primary, single-strain)
Youngs Special London Ale

[Wonkydonkey]

Yeh Ive knocked out this one as well.

I think this was taken a little out of context.

Cheers
WD

[Sye]

This is Seymour's list of yeast sources:

Super stuff, thank you very much

[Dennis King]

That list is fairly old. Ridley's has been shut over 10 years and Shepherd Neame Spitfire has not been bottle conditioned for a similar time.

[Wonkydonkey]

Well I got some beers from lidi today,,
I got the corsendonk. Well it looks like it's got a lot of yeast in these bottles
I also saw they had some La Gauloise blond 6.3% and Amber 5.5% which have some/a little yeast in the bottle, although I can't find out what yeast it is as of yet.. But I got a 4 pack of each, so I will be trying these out in my next few brews..

Edit: it says on the bottle of La Gaulouse, top fermented, and refermented in the bottle. I'm not really sure if they use the same yeast.

Cheers
WD

[Sye]

Well I got some beers from lidi today,,
I got the corsendonk. Well it looks like it's got a lot of yeast in these bottles

Cheers
WD

I went and got 4 Corsendonk as well.. Currently finishing off a harvest of some Sierra Nevada Pale Ale yeast (WLP001 California Ale Yeast) Once it's in my Vials I will try the Abby Yeast (3538-PC) Leuven Pale Ale.

[alexlark]

Anyone know if Hopback Summer Lightning is no longer bottle conditioned? Had a bottle 2 weeks ago and it was brewery conditioned

[gr_baker]

Not sure about now but ten years ago or so I was told that Hop Back used Safale SO4 or Nottingham yeast. If that's still true I wouldn't bother harvesting it.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[alexlark]

Cheers, got plenty of both.

[richard080561]

When you harvest yeast from a bottle I assume you use the dregs from the bottom of the bottle to make a starter. If I want to make a 23 litre Proper Job clone how many bottle of PJ will I need to drink first and what size starter would I need?

[vacant]

I'll soon be kegging a beer that used dregs from two bottles of proper job in a litre of 1030 SG starter wort.

[alexlark]

On Sat I used dregs from 4 bottles in 300ml @ 1.030. It's just finished so I'm stepping that up to 1L @ 1.040 tonight. Once that has finished I'll pour off most of the liquid and use it in a 20L batch. If I don't get time next weekend I'll store it in a 250ml bottle. I'll do a starter when I come to use it.

You can easily use 2 as vacant says but I bought 4, on offer at the moment in Asda, so used them all.

[BarnsleyBrewer]

I've tried bottle conditioned beer yeasts over the years to brew with but disappointed with the results.
I also think it's risky wasting good wort and a brew day to find it's not like you expected, especially nowadays with most breweries using a bottling strain that's neither use nor ornament for brewing!
Years ago when I was doing my apprenticeship brewing Tom Caxtons & John Bull I remember homebrewers using Guinness yeast as a starter with good results, but sadly when I qualified as an AG brewer it was no more.

Nottingham for me, blonde, copper coloured, dark's and stouts............ A few 1st's, 2nd's, & 3rd's in comps can't be all that bad for a so called neutral yeast.