BeerBorg

Last night's home brew club meeting was very interesting. One of the guys there was demonstrating how he dips a loop into a bottle of commercial beer, then makes a zig zag in a petri dish with it. Later he will put that loop over a flame to completely sterilize it, scrape a small sample, and swish it around in 70ML of 1.030 to 1.040 wort. He calls that inoculating. He said it takes about a day for that to take off then he pours to 700 ML of wort. He calls that stepping it up. He steps up until he has enough starter to pitch into his beer. He sterilizes all of his beakers in a pressure cooker with water at 250F. He uses everclear to sanitize the area where he is working. And keeps a flame burning nearby to kill any air born infect-ants. It was really a fascinating demonstration.

One guy brought bacon wrapped jalapenos that he had in his smoker all day. So after the demonstration we enjoyed those and tasted each other's beers.

The End

I think what that guy was doing is called yeast slanting. I've read alot about it and watched some videos and it isn't something I want to do. But, they say it's a small investment, a good deal of work but it pays off. Just not my cup of beer.

Beer-lord wrote:I think what that guy was doing is called yeast slanting. I've read alot about it and watched some videos and it isn't something I want to do. But, they say it's a small investment, a good deal of work but it pays off. Just not my cup of beer.

that's what it sounds like. looked into it last summer...it was interesting, but a lot of work.

jimjohson wrote:

Beer-lord wrote:I think what that guy was doing is called yeast slanting. I've read alot about it and watched some videos and it isn't something I want to do. But, they say it's a small investment, a good deal of work but it pays off. Just not my cup of beer.

that's what it sounds like. looked into it last summer...it was interesting, but a lot of work.

I am pretty sure this guy is retired. Maybe when I retire I might play around with it. But for now, I don't even want to do starters, for that matter I don't even bother with rehydrating my dry yeast.

I'll be able to do more putzing around like that when I retire... doubt I will though. Science is cool, sometimes it's cool to do, other times, cool to watch someone else do...

I'm with you Gymrat in that I want to keep it as KISS as possible but... now we want to reuse our Kolsh yeast for two other beers so there goes the KISS since we are trying to decide whether to wash the yeast or just pitch a slurry etc. for the next two.

I remember trying to "wash" a Kolsch yeast as our first try and the yeast seemed to settle below the trub; it is now in a sanitized gallon jar in the fridge so we see.

I'm thinking we just pitch some of the slurry instead of trying to get at the yeast on the bottom and then doing a starter. We pitched on the ClusterBomb yeast cake for the Free Wort Project and it went nuts.