I’m slowly trying to get into culturing my own yeast for brewing. Recently, I have pitched some yeast and placed it in the refrigerator. I forgot about it. It stayed in the refrigerator for well over a year, possibly closer to two years. Recently, I took it out of the refrigerator to get the brew started again, but it appears to not be starting.
When i read about culturing your own yeast, the literature says you should creat slants (agar & wort) in test tubes. You get them going then you stick them in the refrigerator. I figure, sticking them in the refrigerator stops them from breeding and consuming the food. Yet, all the literature says that every three months you must repitch the yeast.
If the yeast is being arrested by the cold temperature, why does the yeast have to be repitched?
That’s why my culture is not restarting after well over a year then. The yeast could still be good, but it needs some food to get growing. It’s eaten all of its food despite being in the refrigerator. I will make it live again! It’s alive! It’s alive!
I haven’t gotten to the level of making my own slants. I plan to but I need to figure out how to make it easy. This is just a half gallon wort that I brewed and stuck in the refrigerator as soon as it got going. There’s lots of sediment at the bottom so I would guess that there is plenty of spores in that.
I’d ask this over on WWW.HOMEBREWTALK.COM , as you’d probably get a better result of answers. Not that there aren’t a few lab guru’s around here, but HBT has guys that do a lot of slant/yeast washing.
Unless you have access to a cryo-freezer the answer is ,unfortunately, probably no.
You could try storing yeast under glycerol in a test tube in your home freezer, that might buy you 5-6 months before reculturing. You do not have to reculture on a large scale, though. It’s pretty easy, especially if you have access to Malta Goya, often found at Mexican grocery stores.