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I've just made some slants to save yeast cultures on. Easier than I thought just letting them prove for a couple of days to see if I've been sterile enough.
The main reason for this is to save some of the liquid yeast I've got. Its £6 ish a vial and I'd like it to last more than one brew.

Pictures below for those who can't read.

Yeasty

Nice pictures. Someday I might have a go at it? Do you do jams and jellies also?

Yeasty
Nice one! Are you going to store these in the freezer? I've also been wanting to make slants but I haven't found an idiot proof guide yet! Any links/advice?

B

Hop jam or jelly leave that one to you Bob..



I followeed this guide Here its on Jims site. I've PDF'd the important bits for ease of printing. I've asked the author if he doesn't mind me sharing. If he's ok with that I'll post the file.



Yeasty

I've read some posts in the internet but could you give us your method for doing it yeasty?

Amazing pics, cheers mate!

Nice work Yeasty, although having the word FAIL so prominent in the pictures doesn't instill a lot of confidence

I was thinking the same thing...sterile enough....FAIL

So how do you innoculate the slants once you've finished? I tried the freezing yeast in gelatin recently with mixed results. Mixed results being that half have frozen while the other half seem like theyre ok. I have tried to start them yet

FFS its like being back in school....

I'll innoculate them with a wire loop once I'm happy they are sterile..I'm just practicing at the moment, I've got some washed yeast in the fridge and a bottle of Coniston Bluebird I'm going to culture up from the dregs.

I've read a couple of threads about freezing, it seems a Yeast/water/Glycerin ratio of 50/25/25% is the way to go. What was your ratio's seems strange half have frozen whilst the other half haven't..

From memory I was working on that ratio, Im just wondering if the water and geletin weren't mixed completely before they went into the sample containers. Im gonna try starting one up soon and see if it worked

I see you said geletin, all the threads I've read used glycerine. I've never heard of geletin being used.

Glycerin and gelatin are not the same thing .

Just to comment something about sterilization of the slants.
A friend of mine has finished a phd on saccharomyces cerevisiae
and she has researched slants too and she said me that most of
her slants got contaminated.

After carefully collecting from the part of the slant that was not
infected with a sterilized "thingy" for collecting yeast, she cultured
the yeast and she certified that you can get a "clean" strain out of a
contaminated slant.

*She made slants with agar agar

I froze some rinsed yeast last September using 50/25/25, yeast water glycerine . I'll be reviving some soon for an ipa. Can't wait to try it.
There's some great info on homebrewtalk
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index. ... zing_yeast
L

Do it know !!!!

Keep us informed. I think freezing is less hassle than slants and carries less risk of contamination. I'm gonna order more test tubes and give it a go as well..

sorry, i ment glycerine...not geletin

Ok yeasty, they're out of the freezer, few days at fridge temp, then a day at room temp and into a starter. I'm more excited than optimistic because it was one of the first yeasts I rinsed and it most likely contains a lot of trub..... We'll see....

L

Fecking great.. Love it..

I'm going to culture a Coniston bluebird tomorrow, I'll pick up some glycerine and freeze some.

Good on you Yeasty (and Lars). Lol on the going back to school bit .

Beachbum wrote a great thread on freezing yeast here.

Maybe that will help?
PP

Hi PP

I've seen that thread and gave it a bump earlier in the month. I found the original thread on AHB and I think the original experiment was a failure, probably down to Yeast/Glycerine/water ratio's. I'll have to do some more research (I'll start by reading the rest of the AHB thread ) I've just scored a free second hand freezer so may give it a try before its converted to a kegerator.

Yeasty

Wow! Be great to update that thread. Tell BeachBum to stop being slack and do an update - lol!

Nice score on the freezer

Not too sure about this, I revived it in a slightly weak solution of DME and water, about 25g DME to 300ml water. Refrigerated overnight, decanted, and topped up with 600ml water to 55g DME . It's swirling away on my DIY stirplate. I'm not sure how successful it is. Broke my hydrometer on my last brew so I can't check the gravity. A fine krausen ring formed on the 300ml batch, but the liquid didn't settle out very well in the fridge and there was a banana flavour off the decanted liquid, probably because it fermented in the high 20s. The 600ml is swirling away right now, will see what happens.....

L

If this doesn't work I'm trying slants:)

L

Lars

Looks like its survived the freezing. All my slants are still clear so I'm going to inoculate some this weekend.

Hi Yeasty, without reading a load of stuff on slants can u tell me us it a big deal getting to a pitchable volume from a slant? Reason I'm asking is that I bought a slant from brewlab.co.uk and they instructed me to revive it in 300ml and step up to 600ml for a 20l batch. It was no trouble at all. But I think I read somewhere that slants are meant to be tedious to revive to pitchable volumes?

Thanks

L

From what I've read some guys use the same slant multiple times, selecting individual colonies and stepping these up. I can't see the difference between a brewlab slant and one of your own apart from brewlabs should be a more professional product and may have more colonies.