Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirins.

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fizzix
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Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirins.

Post by fizzix »

Experiment to harvest Budweiser Select yeast:

Boiled a quart of water with 4 ounces of DME, half a crushed B vitamin, and a pinch of DAP. Cooled and poured into sanitized beaker. No lumps or clumps.

Sanitized an unopened can of Bud Select. Opened with sanitized hands, and poured 6 ounces of the Bud into the beaker with the DME wort.

Sanitized the magnetic spin bar and tin foil beaker cover.
Stirring for 5 days now, and there's 2 or 3 white aspirin-sized globules that have appeared, spinning through the brown murky wort.
I can't get a decent photo, they're just spinning too fast.

Anyone ever run into this? I mean it has to either be an infection or yeast, doesn't it?
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

Post by Skipper1953 »

Maybe it is the yeast equivalent of ambergris. Those little suckers gotta be dizzy as hell about now and they'd puking up a storm.
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

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Skipper1953 wrote:Maybe it is the yeast equivalent of ambergris. Those little suckers gotta be dizzy as hell about now and they'd puking up a storm.
Should I toss in some Dramamine? :P
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

Post by fizzix »

Microbiologists aside...
Turned off the stirrer for 6 hours, and the "aspirins" have settled into a white settlement on the bottom of the flask. Nothing is floating on top.
I'm wondering if this is yeast as I'm sure an infection would be floating on top. But Budweiser Select is not supposedly a yeast-harvestable beer.
There's not some evil bottom-dwelling cloudy infections, are there?
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

Post by kiwi Bruce »

fizzix wrote: There's not some evil bottom-dwelling cloudy infections, are there?
I don't know for sure...but I don't think so. This is an interesting protocol, where did you get it...and DME (Dimethylether) not something I've seen before.
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

Post by fizzix »

DME in this case is Dried Malt Extract. It's a way to make starter yeast for cultivation.
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

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Grow it up and run a small test fermentation. Check gravity and aromatics. If it passes muster streak out out for isolation and recheck. Catalog. Not sure why you'd want to though.

Most large commercial lagers are some combination of sterile filtered, flash or tunnel pasturized. You shouldn't pull much out... even if you did sterile technique really comes into play. Has to be perfect.... even then that's not the proper way to extract yeast from a liquid in low concentrations like that. Membrane vacuum filtration is your best chance.... 100 ml samples pulled through a 0.45 micron nitrocellulose membrane.
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

Post by fizzix »

butterpants wrote:Grow it up and run a small test fermentation. Check gravity and aromatics. If it passes muster streak out out for isolation and recheck. Catalog. Not sure why you'd want to though.

Most large commercial lagers are some combination of sterile filtered, flash or tunnel pasturized. You shouldn't pull much out... even if you did sterile technique really comes into play. Has to be perfect.... even then that's not the proper way to extract yeast from a liquid in low concentrations like that. Membrane vacuum filtration is your best chance.... 100 ml samples pulled through a 0.45 micron nitrocellulose membrane.
Thanks butterpants. This is to satiate my beer brewing hobby. Everyone said isolating any Budweiser yeast is impossible and I've got nothing but time to try it.
Something that looks like yeast sure is gathering at the bottom.
I'm going to siphon off the top wort and give it fresh malt extract to feed on, then see how it smells. If I get krausening, I'll make a small batch beer and taste it.

I appreciate your proper technique, but I'm just a guy with StarSan, a beaker, and a stir plate.
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

Post by butterpants »

fizzix wrote:
butterpants wrote:Grow it up and run a small test fermentation. Check gravity and aromatics. If it passes muster streak out out for isolation and recheck. Catalog. Not sure why you'd want to though.

Most large commercial lagers are some combination of sterile filtered, flash or tunnel pasturized. You shouldn't pull much out... even if you did sterile technique really comes into play. Has to be perfect.... even then that's not the proper way to extract yeast from a liquid in low concentrations like that. Membrane vacuum filtration is your best chance.... 100 ml samples pulled through a 0.45 micron nitrocellulose membrane.
Thanks butterpants. This is to satiate my beer brewing hobby. Everyone said isolating any Budweiser yeast is impossible and I've got nothing but time to try it.
Something that looks like yeast sure is gathering at the bottom.
I'm going to siphon off the top wort and give it fresh malt extract to feed on, then see how it smells. If I get krausening, I'll make a small batch beer and taste it.

I appreciate your proper technique, but I'm just a guy with StarSan, a beaker, and a stir plate.
Check this fella out. He does everything on the cheap and actually knows what he is doing (nice combo)

https://suigenerisbrewing.blogspot.com/ ... g.html?m=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

Post by kiwi Bruce »

Thank You Butter! I've always wanted to do this, properly. There are several yeasts that are only available seasonally that I would love to keep alive and usable all year long...and they're shi#ing expensive, and I'm a cheap ass. I have always thought that a sample had to be "Acid washed" to kill any bacteria in the mix...which is why, in my mind I jumped to Dimethylether for DME and not malt extract...and it was Paddies Day, with 5 or 6 under the belt. These look like very good vids...so again Thank you Butter !
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

Post by fizzix »

Well thanks. I've harvested yeast that way and you're practically guaranteed a colony for 5-gallons or more of beer.
Harvesting from bottle-conditioned commercial beer is the same way. That's old news.

However, my Bud experiment is acting differently and I should've made that clearer.
The yeast (if any) would be minimal and I was after whether someone else experienced the "aspirins" I was seeing.
Nothing more complicated than that.
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Re: Stir Plate Yeast Harvesting. Looks Like Spinning Aspirin

Post by butterpants »

fizzix wrote:Well thanks. I've harvested yeast that way and you're practically guaranteed a colony for 5-gallons or more of beer.
Harvesting from bottle-conditioned commercial beer is the same way. That's old news.

However, my Bud experiment is acting differently and I should've made that clearer.
The yeast (if any) would be minimal and I was after whether someone else experienced the "aspirins" I was seeing.
Nothing more complicated than that.
I'd need pics....but colony morphology is a lot easier to figure out on plates vs liquid media. Plate that out for us.

I think the toughest thing to figure out in your isolation method is weather or not it's the actual yeast used to brew the beer or just something else. Environmental yeast are not rare.
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