Went yeast hunting today

[YeastWhisperer]

I had the day off from work today, so I decided to go yeast hunting at a local liquor store that stocks a large selection of imported and domestic beers. I picked up bottles of Ridgeway IPA, RCH Pitchfork, and Nethergate Augustinian Ale. I drank and harvested the yeast from a 500ml bottle of Ridgeway IPA this evening. I understand that Ridgeway was founded by a Brakspeare's former head brewer. Does anyone know if Ridgeway is using Brakspeare's yeast?

[seymour]

Fun project, nice work! Here's a summary I put together on another thread: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=55818&hilit=+supermarket#p586754

My research on Ridgeway indicates it's the Hepworth dual-strain, which is really cool in its own right.

I don't know what's available in your stores (at least some of these were listed on the ASDA link you posted), but here's a list I've been compiling of bottle-conditioned beers which are believed to contain the primary strain. I'm sure there are many more which I've missed, and perhaps some of these listed contain a secondary bottling strain. As always, I'm eager for corrections and rebuttals.

Adnams (mini-kegs contain the primary dual-strain, but bottles do not)
Brakspear Oxford Gold, perhaps Triple as well
Cantillon (classic source for diverse lambic cultures)
Chimay
Coniston Bluebird Bitter
Coopers
Courage (some)
D'Achouffe
DeDolle (excellent Belgian multi-strain)
DuPont (classic saison culture, but reportedly a triple-strain, results vary)
Duvel (probably contains primary strain, some dispute)
Fullers Bengal Lancer and 1845 (extremely popular)
Gales Prize Old Ale (classic primary strain, but so old it's likely dead)
Hook Norton (some Flagship IPA and Double Stout bottles are believed to contain primary strain)
Hopback Summer Lightning
Itchen Valley Godfathers
Kindl Weiss (good Berliner Weiss lacto blend)
Marble (derived of the historic Gales strain)
Maredsous (yes-primary, but same as Duvel)
Marstons (some: Oyster Stout or Tesco's IPA?)
Morland Hen's Tooth
Ommegang
Orval (excellent blend of Belgian primary strain + brett)
Ridgeway Bad Elf, Lump of Coal, probably others (brewed by Hepworth, same primary dual strain used in bottles)
Ridleys (some)
Rochefort
Samuel Smith Stingo
Schneider Weiss (supposedly the only hefeweizen bottled with primary strain)
Sharps (some, perhaps the only way to obtain historic Morrells strain)
Shepherd Neame Spitfire and 1698
Sierra Nevada
St. Austell Proper Job and Black Job
Tesco's "Finest Belgian Abbey Ale" by the Huyghe Brewery
Thomas Hardy (some)
Thwaites (some)
Unibroue (a Belgian-style brewery in Canada, very spicy, a mutation of Chimay?)
Westmalle
Westvleteren
Widmer Hefeweizen (not a true Hefeweizen strain, Americanized version of historic Zum Uerige alt strain)
Worthington White Shield (probably not primary strain, but a nice high-attenuating strain anyway)
Wye Valley (filtered but then bottle-conditioned with fresh, primary, single-strain)
Youngs Special London Ale

A couple more ideas for fresh yeast:
Many local microbreweries have imperfect filtration, and likely skip reseeding with a secondary yeast, so it's always worth a try.

Just because a beer doesn't specifically state "bottle-conditioned" doesn't automatically rule it out. If you hold it up to the light and see a layer of white at the bottom, that's yeast. A member here obtained primary yeast from a cloudy bottle of St. Peters Golden Ale. An email to the brewery confirmed they had a recent problem with their filtration!

Other members have reported local pubs giving them the dregs of an "empty" real ale cask, which is almost surely the primary strain.

http://byo.com/stories/article/indices/ ... techniques
http://hbd.org/mbas/yeastht.html

[YeastWhisperer]

My research on Ridgeway indicates it's the Hepworth dual-strain, which is really cool in its own right.

Well, I guess that it's time to purchase a couple of pounds of extract, as plating this yeast strain will not be simple dilute the culture via the four-quadrant stream method and pick a colony exercise. The last dual-strain that I plated was a Ringwood culture that I obtained from a local Peter Austin and Partners-built brewery twenty years ago. I selected ten colonies from the plate and transferred each one to a separate slant. After the slants had been incubated, I ran ten different 1/2 gallon test batches to identify fermentation characteristics. In the end, I managed to collected six colonies of the flocculent strain and four colonies of the attenuative strain. Either strain is usable by itself, but the flocculent strain will leave one with a high terminal gravity.

[seymour]

Bump. Any luck culturing-up the Ridgeway/Hepworth yeast? Have you fermented a batch of beer with it yet?

[orlando]

Well, I guess that it's time to purchase a couple of pounds of extract, as plating this yeast strain will not be simple dilute the culture via the four-quadrant stream method and pick a colony exercise. The last dual-strain that I plated was a Ringwood culture that I obtained from a local Peter Austin and Partners-built brewery twenty years ago. I selected ten colonies from the plate and transferred each one to a separate slant. After the slants had been incubated, I ran ten different 1/2 gallon test batches to identify fermentation characteristics. In the end, I managed to collected six colonies of the flocculent strain and four colonies of the attenuative strain. Either strain is usable by itself, but the flocculent strain will leave one with a high terminal gravity.

Hmm, somehow missed this. This is really interesting, I have had some success with yeast culturing but am unaware of the details of harvesting "separating" and culturing a dual strain. I would be really grateful for more detail on the procedure. Do you have a "How to" you can point me to?