revolutionaries reusing yeast

[Nat-X]

I've searched and read many threads about this, but still can't really discern an answer. So, let me just tell you what I think one would theoretically do, and you tell me if I'm on the right trail.

I read a 200 year old book about distilling in early America. Fascinating. They kept their yeast alive batch to batch. I was wondering how?

So, I'm assuming that after their mash had fermented, all the grain had fallen, and all the clear wash had been siphoned off, what was left in the bottom of the fermentation vessel was a bunch of grain and some light beige sludge, presumably the yeast.

Could this entire lot have been added to the cooked and cooled new grain wash (along with their backset), whereby alleviating the need to have new yeast?

How long would it have lived after fermentation stopped, and without microscopes, how would they have known that the reused yeast was still alive?

I'll bet they made some really good whiskey...probably a 5 gallon wash, 8.5 lb corn, 1 lb rye, 1.5 lb malted barley grain bill, with 7 lbs of sugar and 5 more gallons of water added after the final rest to make a thin wash, distilled in a 100% copper pot stills, probably bottled with charred white oak sticks and aged a few weeks. I'll bet is smelled and tasted delicious.

[S-Cackalacky]

Well, think about it logically - if the wash ferments completely, that is, all the sugar is gone, wouldn't it make sense that there is still some live yeast left in there. Otherwise how would all the sugar have been eaten up. I've heard of some folks throwing a little sugar in there now and then to keep the little buggers alive. Maybe the old timers just figured this out - not terribly difficult. Just because they lived 200 years ago don't mean they stupid.

Just sayin',
S-C

[pfshine]

Just because it was so long ago does not mean they were any dumber than us. In fact i believe they were smarter go ahead and try to do what Pythagoras did or Newton or any other of these brilliant men did. Our intelligence has been subdued by technology.

[corene1]

If you look at the UJSSM recipe. you only add yeast once and then keep it going , just like a sour dough starter. Feed it now and again and it stays good. I have finally done 4 generations of the UJSSM and after pulling all the wash from the grain I put a little bit of water with some sugar in it to help keep the yeast active. After my stripping run I follow the directions in the recipe, then add it to the old corn and yeast and within a couple hours it is going strong again. I am sure that with a little reading and studying you could cultivate and reuse the yeast from any mash you make.

[S-Cackalacky]

If you look at the UJSSM recipe. you only add yeast once and then keep it going , just like a sour dough starter. Feed it now and again and it stays good. I have finally done 4 generations of the UJSSM and after pulling all the wash from the grain I put a little bit of water with some sugar in it to help keep the yeast active. After my stripping run I follow the directions in the recipe, then add it to the old corn and yeast and within a couple hours it is going strong again. I am sure that with a little reading and studying you could cultivate and reuse the yeast from any mash you make.

Another good reason to keep the ABV of the wash at a reasonable level. Too high and the yeast get killed. Some commercial distillers have developed proprietary strains of yeast and kept them alive for decades.

S-C

[Nat-X]

Well, think about it logically - if the wash ferments completely, that is, all the sugar is gone, wouldn't it make sense that there is still some live yeast left in there. Otherwise how would all the sugar have been eaten up. I've heard of some folks throwing a little sugar in there now and then to keep the little buggers alive. Maybe the old timers just figured this out - not terribly difficult. Just because they lived 200 years ago don't mean they stupid.

Just sayin',
S-C

Did I imply they were stupid?

[Nat-X]

Just because it was so long ago does not mean they were any dumber than us. In fact i believe they were smarter go ahead and try to do what Pythagoras did or Newton or any other of these brilliant men did. Our intelligence has been subdued by technology.

Who said they were dumb? Where is this coming from? You forgot Archimedes.

[Nat-X]

If you look at the UJSSM recipe. you only add yeast once and then keep it going , just like a sour dough starter. Feed it now and again and it stays good. I have finally done 4 generations of the UJSSM and after pulling all the wash from the grain I put a little bit of water with some sugar in it to help keep the yeast active. After my stripping run I follow the directions in the recipe, then add it to the old corn and yeast and within a couple hours it is going strong again. I am sure that with a little reading and studying you could cultivate and reuse the yeast from any mash you make.

Thanks. I'll read up on UJSSM.

[jholmz]

a lot of the commercial distilleries use the same strain of yeast for every batch they make. i think it was Jim Beam that i watched a documentary on and they use the same original strain of yeast that they started with

[rad14701]

a lot of the commercial distilleries use the same strain of yeast for every batch they make. i think it was Jim Beam that i watched a documentary on and they use the same original strain of yeast that they started with

I recall watching that same episode a while back and was going to make mention earlier... A very good background into Jim Beam, bourbon, and distillation in general...

[Wewt]

I saw the same. They have the yeast in a special room in a big enclosed mixer lookin' thing. As said above it's the same yeast they started with.(well same type) I'm fairly sure they just kept a water/sugar/yeast mix and everytime you take some yeast out put some back. Them buggers multiply faster than rabbits.

[woodshed]

You can keep yeast goin forever if your careful. I feed mine just a little bit of agave nectar every once and awhile.
Same with my home brew beer. Personalized yeast can really influence your final product.

[MitchyBourbon]

They weren't stupid, just ignorant.

Humans have been using yeast for fermentation for thousands of years. They knew it was doing something but didn't know how or why. It was Louis Pasteur in the late 1860’s who identified yeast as a living organism and the agent responsible for alcoholic fermentation.
 
The quality of beer, wine and spirits were inconsistent at best until 1883, when Emil Christian Hansen described the first techniques for successfully isolating single yeast cells and propagating them to a larger scale. Reusing yeast over and over will eventually produce yeast that is contaminated with all sorts of bacteria, molds and weak mutant yeasts. Producing anything decent from yeast like this would next to impossible.

Using the techniques discovered by Hansen it is possible to isolate a single strain of yeast from a mixture of the yeast soup I described above. This is also how yeast strains are maintained over long periods.

[lampshade]

Just because it was so long ago does not mean they were any dumber than us. In fact i believe they were smarter go ahead and try to do what Pythagoras did or Newton or any other of these brilliant men did. Our intelligence has been subdued by technology.

I would argue that "our intelligence has been subdued by" evolution.

Consider this analogy: Put a book on a copier and make one copy. Take that copy and put it on the copier. Make another copy. Take the second copy and put it on the copier. Make a third copy. Repeat this 10 times. If you look at the 13th copy, you will see that it is different from the book. Each generation is different from its previous generation, because the copier cannot reproduce with 100% fidelity; Instead the copier introduces noise, flaws. And the copier cannot correct the flaws that it introduced in previous generations. To make matters worse, the copier carries the flaws it introduced into subsequent generations.

I would argue that the same is true of human reproduction. Each generation is a flawed reproduction of its parent generation. So it makes sense that the present generation is no smarter than the generation of 200 years ago and is probably less intelligent. This reduction in intelligence is demonstrated by comparing the 6th grade tests that were administered 100 years ago (which are available on the Internet) with the 6th grade tests that are used today.

Thankfully, each human generation has improved technology, which compensates for the mental and physical weaknesses that are introduced by human reproduction (evolution).

Maybe, it would be more appropriate to say that our intelligence has been subdued by "de-evolution."