White Trash wrote:[color=blue]
>
> Ive been told its possible, but by friends of mine that work with yeast for
> a living as scientists, not from people who brew. Could I harvest yeast from
> sediment in a brew (in this case Magic Hat HI.P.A), and grow it for use in
> my own brew? This is mostly an exercise in curiosity for me since I dont
> know much about yeast anyway (have only used dry). Thanks in advance for any
> info.[/color]

Yeah, you can. Not all brews have yeast and not all of them use the
fermentation starin for bottling, but in general I've had pretty good
luck doing it. Make a starter wort with 1 oz. of DME and 1 pint of
water. Boil it for about 10 minutes, then cool it down to the 70s. Put
it in a sanitized container. Carefully pour the beer from the bottle,
leaving about 1/2" of beer ion the bottom, along with the sediment.
Swirl that up and pour it into your starter container. Shake the crap
out of it to aerate, cover it ( I use aluminum foil) and let it ferment
out for a few days. When it's done, boil up some more starter wort,
this time about a qt. of water and 4 oz. DME. When cool, either pour it
into your original container if it's big enough, or transfer the new
batch of wort plus the contents of the origianl starter to a bigger
container, and let it ferment out again. You may need to do this one
more time to get a pitchable quantity of yeast. When you're ready to
pitch, pour the spent wort off from the starter and pitch the yeast
slurry at the bottom. I've had really good luck culturing Chimay yeast
froma a bottle of Chimay Premiere (red label) and Rogue Pacman yeast
from a bottle of Shakespeare stout.

----------->Denny
--
Life begins at 60 - 1.060, that is.

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