Just letting you know that centripetal force has not thrown me off of the earth yet.
I have had 2 successful 5 gallon batches grown up from a single cell with pretty potent yeast character in an ordinary bitter. I've also brewed a 1.078 double IPA without perceptible fusels (could be masked by hop character). It stalled at about 1.020, so I krausened it with a 2 step 1056 starter and it dried to 1.012. Fusels or not, this means that it was under pitched. I have bought a second stir plate for higher gravity beers, and I will work growing 2 starters simultaneously in the future.
I would like to do monthly workshops for this, yeast washing, and canning wort if demand is sufficient. I can alternate them to keep each more brief as they both would require a significant time commitment.
My plan for making new strains available to the club:
- Capture yeast
- Isolate yeast over several plate restreaks
- Create a lawn from a single colony and make several step-up counts
- Leave lawn plate in refrigerator for members who have taken the class to use
200mL starters can be inoculated at the club house, assuming each person has their own pressure cooker to bring. However, until this grows I think starters should be stepped up at each individual's home.
TL;DR I'm not dead, I've done several test batches time permitting which were preliminary successes. I have a plan for a monthly workshop.
Amazing work Mark. Thanks for doing this and sharing your results (and yeast!) with the club!
-Adam
Mark, we're looking to continue 1workshop per month of a varying topic. That being said, yeast will be a popular topic and we could potentially attach a portion to Tuesday Brewsday and then have a more in-depth workshop on a weekend.