[denny]

A yeast library sounds like a labor of love, and I could see someone doing it just for enjoyment. Kind of like building ships in a bottle. You can't fish from them or ski behind them, but it keeps the bottle ship builder happy.

By the way, you might try home brewer rather than amateur. Just sayin...

I kept a yeast ranch for maybe 5-6 years.  As noted, that's how I ran across CL-50.  I eventually gave it up becasue I just didn't have time to maintain it properly.

[S. cerevisiae]

By the way, you might try home brewer rather than amateur. Just sayin...

There's nothing wrong with referring to the hobby as amateur brewing.  I consider myself to be an amateur brewer and an amateur brewing scientist.  The major difference between what I do and what professional brewers and professional brewing scientists do is that professional brewers and professional brewing scientists receive compensation for their work.  I do it as a labor of love.

Here's some of my work:

Scottish and Newcastle's culture on a plate



Southern Tier's culture on a plate



The well-isolated round colonies on the plates shown above are known as single-cell isolates.  They are all the offspring of single yeast cells; therefore, they are pure yeast cultures. Emil Christian Hansen pioneered single-cell isolation at Carlsberg Laboratory.

In a single strain culture, most colonies will be from the same yeast strain with the odd wild yeast colony appearing on a plate from time to time (depending on the source, mold and bacteria can also appear on a plate).  In a multi-strain culture such as real Ringwood, the colonies can be different strains.  The only practical way to distinguish the strains in a multi-strain culture in a home lab is to inoculate multiple slants with a different well-separated colony per slant.  The slants are then incubated and used to create starters that are used to ferment separate batches of beer.  Fermentation performance is notated to identify if there are any differences between the slants.

There are two major strains in a real Ringwood culture.  One strain is highly flocculent.  The other strain is powdery.  The powdery strain does most of the attenuation.   The flocculent strain clears the beer.  The flocculent strain by itself is diacetyl city.  The powdery strain by itself takes forever to clear.   Most of the people who plated Ringwood in the early days only managed to obtain one of the strains because it was not widely known that Ringwood was a multi-strain culture.  I stumbled onto it by accident.  I inoculated several slants using different colonies.  After brewing several batches with different slants and obtaining different results, it dawned on me that there was more than one strain in the culture.  I made two 500ml starters.  One was made from one of my flocculent Ringwood slants.  The other was made from one of my powdery Ringwood slants.  I pitched both starters into the same batch of wort.  The result was spot-on Ringwood.


My current bank



Research-oriented culture collection sourced cultures



Brewery-sourced cultures that I plated for "singles"



The culture tube with "HAR" written on the Parafilm in the photo shown above is Harpoon's culture.

Blank plates cooling



Blank slants cooling




100ml media bottles with 40mls of autoclaved wort (used during propagation from slant)





Autoclave tape after processing


 
Autoclave tape is used to indicate that media has been subjected to moist heat levels that are high enough to result in sterilization, which is beyond normal atmospheric boiling temperature.   It looks like ordinary masking tape before being exposed to sterilization temperatures  (at least 110C).  The piece of tape shown above was wrapped around a 100ml media bottle.

[S. cerevisiae]

S, I picture you writing this in a velvet smoking jacket while puffing on a Cohiba Esplendido and sipping Old Rip Van Winkle.

I do not smoke.  Heck, I barely drink these days.   

[morticaixavier]

S, I picture you writing this in a velvet smoking jacket while puffing on a Cohiba Esplendido and sipping Old Rip Van Winkle.

I do not smoke.  Heck, I barely drink these days.   

given the lack of specific denial can we assume the velvet smoking jacket is on target?

[klickitat jim]

Why am I picturing Walken as The Continental?

[hopfenundmalz]

Maybe Kolsch was a bad choice of words. On the extreme clean side I am thinking faux lager. Not sure if that makes a difference or not.

I think that can be done pretty reliably with any ale strain that doesn't have any out-of-balance characteristics… Ringwood would still throw diacetyl, Nottingham would be a little apple-y, etc.

All it should take is a higher pitching rate (I go to something like 1.0-1.2 million/mL-°P) and dropping the temperature into the high 50s for pitching and the first day or three, after which it can be warmed into the 60s (room temp even) for the diacetyl rest. I've brewed a few medal-winning "lagers" doing this with both Chico and Fuller's strain. Being a yeast racist, I preferred brewing with the 1968.

So why don't you like Chico, Sean?

[reverseapachemaster]

I used to keep a much larger group of strains at home both frozen and in the fridge. It was too much work and too much fridge space. I just didn't need that many strains. I still have all of my frozen strains but now I keep a smaller number of strains on hand. Depending on my brewing for the year I either keep a neutral strain or an English strain that I can take from estery to clean. I also keep 3711 because I brew lots of saison. I am also introducing a lager strain into the fold. If I need something specific I'll either tap it out of the frozen bank or buy it if I don't have it. If I bought it then it goes into the frozen bank.

[mugwort]

...The well-isolated round colonies on the plates shown above are known as single-cell isolates.  They are all the offspring of single yeast cells; therefore, they are pure yeast cultures. Emil Christian Hansen pioneered single-cell isolation at Carlsberg Laboratory....

Thank you, I really appreciate the pics and detailed explanations.  Thought about getting into this but nowhere to this level.

[S. cerevisiae]

Thank you, I really appreciate the pics and detailed explanations.  Thought about getting into this but nowhere to this level.

You're welcome.   You will be surprised to discover how fast your knowledge of yeast culturing will grow.  Yeast culturing is a very addictive sub-hobby within the amateur brewing hobby. 

[dcb]

There's nothing wrong with referring to the hobby as amateur brewing.  I consider myself to be an amateur brewer and an amateur brewing scientist.  The major difference between what I do and what professional brewers and professional brewing scientists do is that professional brewers and professional brewing scientists receive compensation for their work.  I do it as a labor of love.

I hate it that we've hijacked the word "amateur" to imply ineptness.  It come from the Latin amare meaning to love.  In nearly every human endeavor, I see amateurs who attend to details at a level no professional would tolerate. 

And thank you for the enlightening, informative post!

[erockrph]

There's nothing wrong with referring to the hobby as amateur brewing.  I consider myself to be an amateur brewer and an amateur brewing scientist.  The major difference between what I do and what professional brewers and professional brewing scientists do is that professional brewers and professional brewing scientists receive compensation for their work.  I do it as a labor of love.

I hate it that we've hijacked the word "amateur" to imply ineptness.  It come from the Latin amare meaning to love.  In nearly every human endeavor, I see amateurs who attend to details at a level no professional would tolerate. 

And thank you for the enlightening, informative post!

I think a lot of homebrewers still balk at the term amateur, since there is still a bit of stigma that homebrew is universally inferior to pro/craft brew. I have had a lot of amazing homebrew, and I have had a lot of mediocre (or worse) "craft" beer. Of course, I've had crappy homebrew and stellar pro brew as well. But "amateur" is a perfectly valid description for what we do, as is "hobby brewer".

And please allow me to add my thanks for the yeast porn! I wish I had the time to keep up a yeast ranch. Until then I'll have to live vicariously.

[beersk]

S, I picture you writing this in a velvet smoking jacket while puffing on a Cohiba Esplendido and sipping Old Rip Van Winkle.

I do not smoke.  Heck, I barely drink these days.   

given the lack of specific denial can we assume the velvet smoking jacket is on target?

I have nothing to contribute but that was funny!

[tommymorris]

There's nothing wrong with referring to the hobby as amateur brewing.  I consider myself to be an amateur brewer and an amateur brewing scientist.  The major difference between what I do and what professional brewers and professional brewing scientists do is that professional brewers and professional brewing scientists receive compensation for their work.  I do it as a labor of love.

I hate it that we've hijacked the word "amateur" to imply ineptness.  It come from the Latin amare meaning to love.  In nearly every human endeavor, I see amateurs who attend to details at a level no professional would tolerate. 

And thank you for the enlightening, informative post!

But "amateur" is a perfectly valid description for what we do, as is "hobby brewer".

I for one hope we don't have a movement to start calling our hobby amateur brewing or hobby brewing. I much prefer the term home brewing.

[tommymorris]

PS. The yeast ranch pictures and commentary were really cool. I think S needs to go for a PHD. That is the kind of passion that would make him a successful researcher and professor.

[klickitat jim]

There's nothing wrong with referring to the hobby as amateur brewing.  I consider myself to be an amateur brewer and an amateur brewing scientist.  The major difference between what I do and what professional brewers and professional brewing scientists do is that professional brewers and professional brewing scientists receive compensation for their work.  I do it as a labor of love.

I hate it that we've hijacked the word "amateur" to imply ineptness.  It come from the Latin amare meaning to love.  In nearly every human endeavor, I see amateurs who attend to details at a level no professional would tolerate. 

And thank you for the enlightening, informative post!

But "amateur" is a perfectly valid description for what we do, as is "hobby brewer".

I for one hope we don't have a movement to start calling our hobby amateur brewing or hobby brewing. I much prefer the term home brewing.

It really doesn't matter to me. I just say brewer and leave it at that. I've not met S yet, but I'll bet he means no offense at all. Its technically correct. But I also agree with you.