Collecting Yeast for Future Brews

[Qwest]

unlike about every other beer on the market Coopers comes with a best after date not a best before , use the freshest beer you can find (pale / mild are the best )
best results come from long necks , sit them upright in fridge for a few days-week , pour 95% of the beer off leaving the yeast intact then swirl to get them off bottle base .

i like waking them up with pure table sugar , 3 long necks worth of yeast in 500 mls of boiled then cooled water with 50g white sugar.
ferment , chill then decant beer
step up to 1,000 ml of wort with 50g white table sugar and 50g LDM
ferment ,chill and decant beer
step up to 1,500 ml with 150g of LDM
ferment , chill and decant beer
i pitch 2/3rds of the yeast into a batch , save other 1/3rd in the fridge .

it's simply a monster of a yeast , being bred for commercial use it can get fussy about temp but works quickly and drops like a stone .
not ideal for many styles as it does throw esters but for certain beers it's just perfect .

Run it at 16.5 C until it hits 75 % AA then raise temps to 18-19 for another few days for clean up , no cold crash needed and bottle / keg early

I thought you weren't supposed to use sugar when growing yeast? JZ says that if you feed the yeast that simple of a sugar, they will get used to it and not want to eat the maltose.

 

[Mark D Pirate]

Any other yeast I wouldn't use dex
Its what works well for this strain though
I often get 85% AA in as little as 5 days , lag times of 8 -12 hours from pitching at 18-20 while its chilling to 16.5 °C

Sadly for you guys they only way to culture it is from the commercial ale

 

[Mark D Pirate]

The sugar is just a simple breakfast for them , I change the ratio of dex /LDM at each step