Yeast Harvesting

[Mike Neilson]

Ok I have just ordered and picked up all the parts I need for my stir plate and 15 test tubes. My thinking is I should start Harvesting Yeast. Is my thinking correct about harvesting yeast? If I have a wyeast smack pack, can I split these up into say 5 equal test tubes and seal them off, when I am ready to make a starter, I just start with a five hundred mls starter, then after 24 hrs increase this by adding an additional 500mls to the flask and then so on untill I hit my desired yeast count as per say Mr Malty? Did I even make sense? what do you guys do to make your Wyeast go alittle further than 1 batch?

[Stu H]

I recently got involved in my first foray with liquid yeasts. I got my buddy to grow and make gycerol stocks of the two wyeast strains (3068 and 1272) incidentally. We did it at his work (he's a yeast scientist). Man they had air sterilizers and all sorts of stuff, totally tech, and really fast!

He didn't grow the yeast with DME though, he used some weird yellow solution that's specific for growing yeast cultures in the lab - I guess it'll be sweet though.

I'm pretty excited to start doing some brews with liquid yeasts - I think I'm going to try this experiment doing a split batch, one half open fermented and the other one closed. Should be interesting anyways!