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Hey guys,

Anybody had success culturing a starter up from a large (roughly 700ml if i recall, crown seal) bottle of La Chouffe?

I've had one going about 4 days now, no activity. I boiled up a dollop or two of LME and about 200ml of water, waited til it cooled and poured it into the bottle where the dregs were left behind after pouring the beer out.

It's a fairly strong beer, 8.5% if i remember correctly... would the seasoned yeast culturers say there's much chance of it taking off if it hasn't by now?

It smells like a weaker version of La Chouffe still, so i don't think it's gone off... just not convinced it's started. Maybe i should pour a little off and taste to see how sweet it is..

Hi mate, did you do a gravity test before hand?

d'oh. no

You can always punch in the figures to brewcraft calc to estimate your SG if you remember how much of what you used in your starter? Or pour off the wort and top up with fresh sweets.

Did you aerate the wort after you boiled it?

I would pour off the liquid from the top and make a new batch, aerate it VERY well and add it in small increments to the starter over a few hours time, this should help step the yeast up. I usually use 250g of LLME to 1.5L or so in a 2L juice bottle. I keep one with the trub in it and the other with the sterile wort, I then slowly transfer bits of the wort from the wort bottle to the trub bottle making sure to shake the heck out of it each time before I pour the wort in.

it never ended up taking off... had a duvel starter trying to get moving now for a day or two, hasn't started yet. dregs of 3 bottles.

KEG wrote:it never ended up taking off... had a duvel starter trying to get moving now for a day or two, hasn't started yet. dregs of 3 bottles.

My CPA starter took 5 days to take off (dregs of 6 bottles), but once it did it was a pretty spectacular yeast!

Just as a point of interest to that, I made up 3 different starters from recultured Hoegaarden Wit for wheat beers , all made up exactly the same way,yet only one of them performed. Altho I did get 3 repeat uses out of the good one.

i'm in no major hurry to brew this time. started it a couple days ago, will probably want to pitch it 7 days from now. plenty of time, hopefully. will be stepping it up throughout the week as needed.

i've read a bit about the duvel yeast - apparently there's 2 primary strains which they filter out, then the bottling strain is only one of the primaries. still, if the starter smells good, it's getting used. the strain is obviously capable of survival in 8.5% alcohol if it starts up.

There`s a website somewhere that names all the commercial yeasts that can be recultured with success, I had it but lost it long ago. It was very handy.

http://www.nada.kth.se/~alun/Beer/Bottle-Yeasts/

there ya go, bookmmark it. very handy indeed

looks like that link`s not working. I get "page cannot be displayed".
Anyone else tried it?
Belay that. Got it now.Ta KEG, that`s the one , btw.

Great link Chris.
Thanks

msot welcome

perhaps we should have a "useful links" sticky (or is there one already??)

things like the brewcraft calculators, the yeast link, "how-tos" on using hydrometers, steeping grain, culturing yeast starters, etc etc.

perhaps it would be better outside the forum - eg. a "links" category along the top of the page, below the HBAB logo - where "FAQ", "Search", etc is.

Sounds good to me.
Oliver?

i'd be happy to take suggestions and compile something if one of the mods/admins wants to make it a sticky once it's ready.

I did read somewhere, a long time ago so I can't be specific, but it was mentioned that some Belgian brewers filter the beer and use a conditioning yeast in the bottle, can't authenticate this but from expreience, I've tried to get LaChouffe yeast to re-activate with no success.

according to the link posted above...

La Chouffe
Primary strain? Good results. High flocculation. {1} Medium attenuation. Nice, estery character.

Hey Guys I'm planning on doing my first yeast culture with some Chimay Blue, for Lethal's clone.
http://helms-deep.cable.nu/~rwh/blog/wp ... _wallpaper

From the link above (KEG's):

Chimay
General
Apparently the same strain in all three versions. Appears to be primary strain. Several have had good results. Solvent and banana flavors at high fermentation temperatures or bad yeast health? Same as Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey?

So the plan:
I've got 2 bottles of Chimay blue to cloture the yeast from and was planning to just:
1, Drink the precious, lovely Trappist goodness,
2, Put a large teaspoon of LDME in each of the bottles
3, Get some boiled water to 30 degrees and put into chimay bottles, dissolving the yeast and LDME. shake well
4, Seal bottles with glad wrap and wait.

This was my plan for culturing the yeast from the bottles, but since I've never done this before I thought I'd rush it buy you guys to make sure it was the way to go.
Furthermore, does anyone know how long it would take for these to start fermenting? And at which point should I pitch them into a ready wort?

Trizza.

boil the LDME in the water to sanitise it, and try to get the temp below 30.. room temp is best - match the bottle temp and wort temp as best as possible.