Yeast conservation

Production methods from starch to sugars.

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Hillbilly Popstar
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Yeast conservation

Post by Hillbilly Popstar »

So all my local grocers are out of yeast....


Question: how would one go about creating and maintaining a colony of yeast from the trub left over after a ferment?

Also, could the trub be used for baking things like bread?
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Re: Yeast conservation

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Re: Yeast conservation

Post by Hillbilly Popstar »

Twisted Brick wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 11:26 am Spent grains are useless for bread.
I am aware. But what about the yeast?

How would one go about using the yeast to bake?
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Re: Yeast conservation

Post by Twisted Brick »

I'm a sourdough guy, but I've never recovered yeast from a beer ferment for baking bread. If it were me, I would recover an amount, say, a tablespoon, and make a poolish or biga (yeast-cultured dough) with it. It might take awhile for the yeast to adjust to eating flour instead of wort. After several generations you would know it's growth rate and how much to use in whatever recipe you're making.
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Re: Yeast conservation

Post by Hillbilly Popstar »

Never made any bread. Looks likentheres gonna be a learning curve.

Thanks for giving me some places to start looking and reading.
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Re: Yeast conservation

Post by pope »

You can make your own sourdough starter by doing things like either rinsing unwashed grapes and using the water, or using rye flour. It can take a couple weeks to get a culture going. I would try and start one from trub, the worst that can happen is you don’t get it going. If you try the trub route, check out the instructions for starting a sourdough culture from scratch for rye, the times and temperatures for early feedings should be a good range to start with. Once you’ve fed for a few days the amount of trub in your starter should be pretty small.

Also not sure where in the country you are, but I feel like CA was a few days ahead of the curve on the panic buying (I’m basing this only off of communications with a few out of state family members), we are starting to see more food on the shelves here in the last couple days incl. bread and flour. If you can get it, Smart & Final-type stores carry 1- or 2-lb bricks of yeast and you’d be good for quite a while with that, bread or ferments.
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Re: Yeast conservation

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Preesh
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Re: Yeast conservation

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Bakers in the old days used to make 'spon' yeast (I guess from the word 'spontaneous' ).

Not sure of the exact method but I believe it was a natural yeast and the method involved setting aside cooked potatoes
or presumably the potato water with or without some potato still in it. Then they would 'feed' it each day to keep it going.

And I think it was common for the baker to get yeast from the brewery.

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Re: Yeast conservation

Post by shadylane »

Hillbilly Popstar wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 10:55 am So all my local grocers are out of yeast....


Question: how would one go about creating and maintaining a colony of yeast from the trub left over after a ferment?

Also, could the trub be used for baking things like bread?
Just a thought
I think, taking a scoop of liquid from an actively fermenting wash or mash is better than trying to reuse the trub.
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Re: Yeast conservation

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Re: Yeast conservation

Post by Saltbush Bill »

There is a ton of information out there on the net about saving and storing your own yeast, the beer forums have a lot on the subject........just gotta get off ya butt and google it.
There should be no reason why a small amount of the yeast cake from the bottom of a fermenter wont rise bread dough as long as there is a small amount of sugar present in the dough. Its main job is to create carbon dioxide to turn the dough from a a dense mass to something that resembles a well risen light loaf of bread.
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Re: Yeast conservation

Post by Twisted Brick »

Whether harvested from a secondary or primary (fresher) the yeast still needs to be washed to separate it. Although tempted, I would be leery about transferring a relatively small population of growing yeast along with whatever (non-boiled) bacteria and wild yeast that came on the original (malt) grains. I once got a nasty infection (long, white snot-like strings) after pouring new wort onto a just-racked ale yeastcake in a carboy and stopped re-using yeast altogether.

Of all the options, I think harvesting yeast from a starter is best. No mutation and the chance of infection is minimized.
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Re: Yeast conservation

Post by The Baker »

Saltbush Bill wrote: Tue Mar 24, 2020 12:26 am There is a ton of information out there on the net about saving and storing your own yeast, the beer forums have a lot on the subject........just gotta get off ya butt and google it.
There should be no reason why a small amount of the yeast cake from the bottom of a fermenter wont rise bread dough as long as there is a small amount of sugar present in the dough. Its main job is to create carbon dioxide to turn the dough from a a dense mass to something that resembles a well risen light loaf of bread.
It also creates alcohol which is evaporated in the baking process.

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