Jim's Beer Kit

I pitched the 600ml high vitality starter into 20L, which is going to be plenty to fill my pin cask. Fermentation got delayed after my impatience late in the evening decided to pitch the yeast starter into wort that was over cooled by mistake. The difference (14*C vs room temperature) shocked the ye...

That sounds about right, Eric. I read somewhere too that the brewery sample originally sent to Lallemand was multi strain/variant and only one isolate was propagated. I’ve used it 3-4 times over the last 18 months or so, out of curiosity or on a whim with no wet yeast to hand. I should have noted ea...

So what do home brewers think about Verdant IPA yeast? I've used it a few times now. Tried to work with it by repitching wet, but it just lacks basic qualities of a good English yeast strain. I find it actually incredibly one-dimensional with a really unbalanced 'peachy-vanilla' thing going on. It's...

It’s winding down this morning with final flocculation in progress. IMG_0787.jpeg Ideally, it should be pitched today without any chilling. Or certainly within a few days after being stored cold in the fridge. Regardless, at this stage, I’d let it carry on at least for the rest of the day day, until...

Good grow overnight. It still appears to be behaving like a good top cropper with yeast flocculating on top and bottom leaving relatively clear wort in between.
Gave it a swirl to knock out excess CO2 and get yeast back in the starter wort.

Now it just needs to be left alone for a couple days to do its thing.

Just let it thaw and come up to room temperature.
It's only a yeast starter.

Decided to go with Harvey's first. I think it's been a while. I let the overnight mini (10ml) starter carry on culturing until finished and got a nice layer of sedimented yeast after a couple days. So got out some pre-prepped frozen starter wort to thaw. No hurry. Just left it sat there until at roo...

Yes, got some WLP037 freshly prepped. One of my favourites too. Along with Harvey’s and WY1469. I got a bit bored playing with Verdant’s strain. It’s not bad but gets a bit too ‘peachy-vanilla’ for my taste/beers. I’m looking forward to getting back using these other strains. All much better, imo.

Selected some healthy looking yeast colonies to inoculate an overnight culture for fresh slopes.

It’s not what I’d expect to see after a few weeks, it should have cleared by now. Even a low flocculating strain. Dead cells drop like weights. As JonB suggests, if it's some weird mutant cells staying in suspension, decanting off the spent wort is going to to get rid of them. Personally, I'd say wo...

I brewed a batch of bitter last year with bramling hops that I really like. Unfortunately the only shop I ever saw that carried them went out of business. We can send Bramling Cross hops to you, we are sending a fair few varieties, especially English, to the States now. You might want to keep that ...

Definitely, in the perfect medium, like beer, yeast can survive for many decades. But not so long on slopes, even though slopes are the best format in Brewer's time. I'm going to plate out and select some healthy-looking colonies for a starter then I'll make a half batch of Bitter to assess things.

I found a box of old yeast slopes. They’ve been stored at room temperature for at least 3 years by mistake and were meant to go in the bin. A couple had a few very large (old) surviving colonies. What a great natural experiment! What allowed these few colonies to survive? How are they different? Is ...

Does the pin protrude enough to loosen it with a thin flat edge, e.g., chisel or screwdriver? Is there a grub screw keeping it in place? Possibly in the end of the long hex nut. Looks like you can swing the cylinder down and look through the back. Otherwise I can only imagine the cylinder needs to b...