I visited a specialist pub recently, and bought a bottle of Schneider Weisse TAP7 Unser Original.
It is regarded as a good quality German wheat beer, though unfortunately I have no experience of these beers so will take it as read that it is.
I believe this brewery only uses one strain of yeast, and therefore, their bottle conditioned beers contain the same strain as for fermentation. Naturally being inquisitive, I thought it would be worth seeing if I could culture these little fellas. I was initially dismissive of any success as I have heard it is possible to have no live beasts, coupled with the fact that by the time I began the experiment (opened the bottle) it was just out of date. Here is what I did;
I didn’t flame the bottle neck but instead soaked in VWP solution for 5 minutes, opened & poured, leaving about 50ml of beer & dregs.
Boiled approx 150g of DME in 1500ml water as a starter, and split in 2 sanitized containers, and chilled for later use.
Added a further 50ml approx of the cooled starter to the bottle, keeping the sanitized foil cap on at all times. I then left the bottle in an ambient temp room for about 3 or 4 days to let the tenants get used to their new food source.
After this time I dispensed into a sanitized beaker ready for the stir plate, and added another 100ml of sterile wort (allowed to reach room temp), and stirred for about 3 days.
I chilled the solution to drop the yeast. Decanted the wort leaving as little as possible (as this still contained original beer & original starter). I then added about 200/300ml of fresh DME starter and set it stirring again for another couple of days.
At this stage I could see clouding, and when I stopped stirring, I could see the plenty of yeast growth, so I knew something was happening. Due to this I felt confident in taking gravity readings, as any infection risk should be reduced now I have competitive yeast thriving.
When the gravity got to about 1010, I did the same again but added 1L of fresh DME. I let stir for a few more days, then when the gravity got to 1010 again, I decanted liquid and added cooled boiled water for a yeast wash.
Chilled for 24 hours and washed again in water (this is to hopefully send them into sleep mode until I am ready to utilise them).
Here are the pics of the yeast wash, and after settling.
So i would say it was quite successful!
Not sure i will have enough for 23L as there is approx 50ml of yeast, but interestingly i tasted the spent wort and it was similar to the bottle (it is very heavy clove).
Just need to plan a wheat brew ASAP and get these into action.
Cheers
have you been sending Shib all of those beer samples through BB as well? 
