I just bottled a St. Arnold's Christmas Ale clone and I used a starter I
made from the bottoms of two of the commercial beers.
It tastes great so far. Very smooth.

Here is how I cultivated the starter:
I boiled up 1/2 gallon DME to about a gravity of 1.050 and chilled it to 68,
then siphoned into a 1 gallon carboy (a wine bottle I purged of its contents
and sanitized). I then poured the bottoms of the St. Arnold's Christmas Ales
into the carboy and affixed a bubbler (now St. Arnold's Christmas Ales are
filtered, but not micro filtered, but I was not sure it would have enough
yeast to start). Now it showed no signs of fermentation even after 3 days,
so I swirled the wort in the carboy, this acted the same as whirlpooling
when brewing. The sediment gathered to a small area in the center of the
carboy on the bottom. The next day I noticed a few bubbles on top in the
middle. It took off from there.
Now in hind site, I would start in a smaller bottle with about 1/2 cup wort,
then in two days add 1 cup wort then go up to 1 or 2 quarts.

I brewed 10 gallons with a friend and we each took 5 gallons of wort. He did
not want to chance brewing with my cultured starter, so he bought the yeast
that was called for in the recipe in BYO Dec. issue. Well, his brew
fermented hard for 5 days and stopped fermenting and stuck at 1.022 and mine
fermented smooth and steady (3 sec/bubble) for 15 days and finished at 1.016

I am washing the yeast to try to save it as you cannot buy the source beer
until Dec.
--

Just Brew It!
Johnny Mc

To E-mail me, just cut the "CRAP"!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"dug88" <dug88@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:OjWDd.18223$6l.13093@pd7tw2no...[color=blue]
> probably NOT really a good idea.
> just go back to your supply shop and get the original yeast.
> and of course let me know what brand it was.
>
> The mother yeast can be saved in back of your fridge, if you feed it and
> nurture it.
> But the things that walk around in the back of my fridge are scarey.
> after 4 weeks in the bottle the yeast is pretty much a dead doornail.
>
>
> "D. Andrew Stevens" <pheaj@chartermi.net> wrote in message
> news:9OCBd.2268$LT.1349@fe04.lga...[color=green]
>> You can try this link...down under the bottle conditioned beer subtitle
>> they
>> talk about how to do it
>> [url]http://hbd.org/mbas/yeastht.html[/url]
>>
>> "Hippocampus" <kardosh@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:cr4m19$jp5$1@news2.netvision.net.il...[color=darkred]
>>>
>>> Can anyone advise me as to what is the process of culturing yeast from
>>> left over beer ( la chouffe).
>>> I have some left over beer ( about 50 cc)and I read on the label it is
>>> not pasteurized so I hope something is still alive.
>>> Any advice would be appreciated,
>>> Thanks and happy new year, Michael[/color]
>>
>>[/color]
>
>[/color]