Yeast harvesting, please take a look at this image.

[ChrisG]

Hi everyone,

I am harvesting some yeast from a bottle of Hopback's Summer Lightning and so far it seems to be going very well.

I started off with 100g spray malt and 1L of water, boiled then cooled and added the yeast found in the bottle of Summer Lightning.

It seems that I have around 1cm of yeast in my 2L jug, but where do I go from here?

Should I decant the wort and make a new larger starter, ideally i would like to build up enough for 6-8 mini starter bottles for future brews.

What i was so surprised at was i only started this last night and woke up to lots of healthy looking vigorous yeast. I can see it moving around and exploding like mini solar flares.

Quite impressive stuff!

[Tango Man]

If all the wort has been exhausted, I would chill it to get the yeast to settle out at the bottom. drain off the stale wort and then add a fresh batch of oxygenated wort.

[ChrisG]

do you think a full demijohn of wort would be the next step? or just half, then work up to that?

[ChrisG]

I upped it to 3L spray malt and 3L water just transferred it so fingers crossed.

[46philh]

I started with 2 bottles of hbsl at 30g 300ml of wort for 3 days.

Was going to step up to 2 ltr but only got 100g of dme left so just gone up to 1ltr

Will that be enough yeast for a 23 ltr brew on Saturday ?

[Tango Man]

You usually get around 30ml of yeast in the wyeast flasks which I have found to be enough for a brew. On that basis chill the spent wort as mentioned then split off the white stuff at the bottom (should have a consistency of toothpaste) then measure the paste. If that is more than 30ml you are good to go, just make sure you get it to the same temperature as your wort and make sure you have really aerated the wort to encourage yest growth in the first stage of fermentation.

[Wolfy]

I started with 2 bottles of hbsl at 30g 300ml of wort for 3 days.
Was going to step up to 2 ltr but only got 100g of dme left so just gone up to 1ltr
Will that be enough yeast for a 23 ltr brew on Saturday ?

I'd say it should be fine for a standard gravity UK Ale, especially if you have aerated it well or used a stir-plate (but most calculations would say you are underpitching a bit).
As a very rough guess in regard to yeast quantities, you can compare a 1L starter to a pack of store-purchased liquid yeast.

You usually get around 30ml of yeast in the wyeast flasks which I have found to be enough for a brew.

WhiteLabs use vials/test tubes and Wyeast use smack-packs.
However, since the labs force-feed, concentrate and deliver the yeast without impurities, I'm not sure you can directly equate the amount of yeasty solids in commercial packs to what you make with a starter. I'd want to have at least 30% more yeast slurry to compensate for the non-lab-variables and conditions from growing your own yeast.

[ChrisG]

Managed to gather enough for 6 starter batches, which i have transferred into bottles for storage. Looking forward to trying this yeast out.

[46philh]

mine has set off really well.

the HBSL yeast and the US-05, Bubbler Air Locks sound like they are talking to each other!

[46philh]

Kicked off really well for the first 5 to 7 days but my Hopback's Summer Lightning yeast has stuck at 1020 now.

Gave it a rouse 3 days ago.
has been in FV 12 days now.

Do try and add some more yeast ? Bottle ? or Bin ?

[Maltmaniac]

If it's got alcohol in it and it tastes fine then I would certainly keep it. If it's got anywhere near 30 points of a drop then it puts it in the 4% alcohol bracket, so still a nice, if slightly sweeter brew.

Going to try a yeast cultivation for a Hoegaarten I'm going to try and will try your technique.

[piet_v]

Kicked off really well for the first 5 to 7 days but my Hopback's Summer Lightning yeast has stuck at 1020 now.

Gave it a rouse 3 days ago.
has been in FV 12 days now.

Do try and add some more yeast ? Bottle ? or Bin ?

In my experience you must repeatedly aerate the Hopback yeast during the first 12 hours of fermentation.
(I used aeration stone at 1/3/6/12 hours for 15 minutes each time)
If you fail to do so it will get stuck at around 1020 mark.

You can now bottle it - using a moderate amout of priming sugar. Also try to drink the beer rather quickly as over time it
will keep fermenting the resudual sugars at a very slow pace (eventually resulting in very foamy beer).

I did about 10 brews with the Hopback yeast; some turned out very well; but now i have givven up on the yeast because
it is to difficult to handle in homebrew environment.

[46philh]

Thanks for the useful advice.

[HighHops]

I brewed with this yeast last year and it was a lovely beer but its final gravity did get very low, down to 1004 if I remember right. It was a nice hoppy beer but had the dryest finish of the yeasts in this experiment. Nice, crisp, refreshing pint though!

Your pic looks similar to mine in this link. The yeast stayed in suspension for a long time and had quite a small krausen.

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