Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Perpetuated yeast

I racked my Spiced Winter Ale yesterday. It tasted pretty dang good. The gravity had only dropped to 1.022. So, my alcohol content may be a little lower than I was shooting (6% vs. 6.9%). Oh well, it was good. The spices were a bit strong but that should mellow in the secondary and then in the bottle.

I was pleased how it turned out because of the yeast I used. A month before I made this batch I stole some yeast (Wyeast 1056) from a yeast starter and capped it in a sanitized bottle. I stored this in my refrigerator for a month. When I was ready to use it again, I opened the bottle and made another starter from it. Fermentation took place and no weird flavors showed up. I'm pretty confident the yeast survived my manipulations and storage.

I plan on using this procedure regularly in the future to stretch my yeast a little further.

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