Among my recurring expenses when I brew is buying yeast. Yeast is alive, and brewing beer is a controlled population explosion and collapse—the little single-celled organisms giving their lives that we might also live, and live more happily, too.
I buy yeast in packets at the store, where it is kept refrigerated. There is a light sleeve of yeast inside the heavier lined packet with some starter yeast food; you hold the packet on your palm and smack it hard with your other palm to burst the thin sleeve of yeast open, then squish the packet around some to mix the yeast cells in with the food, and the population explosion begins. Leave the packet out to warm to room temperature, swelling the package during brewing. My last step in brewing is bringing the temperature of 10 gallons of beer down from a light boil to about 80 degrees as quickly as I can, then pitching the yeast. Voila! If all goes well, there’s a swelling yeast population in the carboys of beer.
Noticeable fermentation can begin within 24 hours, and should begin within a couple days—I’ve never had a batch not begin fermenting. But I have always bought a couple packets of yeast, usually complementing strains, so I have plenty if anything goes wrong.
The yeast packages aren’t that expensive: about eight bucks each, a little more with tax. Of course, over the course of a year, it adds up. So I decided to try an experiment.
Lager-style beers like cooler temperatures. So I brew lagers in December. They take longer to ferment and condition than do ales, so I don’t bottle until February and the beer is fully conditioned and ready to drink in April. (Just as it gets warm and sunny out! Baseball, sausages and cold brew! Woo hoo!)
So I did my annual lager in mid-December, using a “Czech Pils” yeast in one carboy and “Budvar Lager” in the other; a third carboy has a mix of the two. And then I looked at recipes for another beer, considering a doppelbock as well as a corn lager.
The corn lager won out. This is a bit of joke with my friends and the gents at the brew supply store – corn is one of the additives corporate brewers adulterate their beers with to reduce expenses; corn is cheaper than malted barley. (Aside: I’ve often wondered what Budweiser, Hamm’s, Schlitz, etc. tasted like when the founders first brewed their beers back in the 19th century; far different than the watered down beverages they make these days, I bet. Using less grain and hops is part of the cost-savings, as well as using corn and/or rice.)
But can a tasty corn lager be brewed?
Since I began brewing for my office holiday party, I haven’t experimented as much. I’ve kept to the styles I’ve had most success with (Belgian white ale, lager, IPA, stout), but I’ve wanted to go back to playing with different styles, as I used to do.
So a couple weeks after brewing the lager, after the three carboys had finished primary fermentation, Dave (my trusty assistant brewer) came over and we drove to the store, looking for flaked corn. And had some fun with the guys down there (who all have their own batches brewing in the back, and are among the jolliest salesclerks you’ll ever meet) as we discussed ingredients and adulteration – yes, they had “corn flakes,” but no, it doesn’t double as breakfast cereal if there’s any left over. It is yellow (the package called it “maize” in addition to flaked corn) but it’s chunky pellets. (Actually, I didn’t think to try it for breakfast … )
Dave has always brewed and bottled with me, but has never seen the intermediary step of “racking” the beer. Racking is simply siphoning the beer from the primary fermentation carboy to a clean, sterilized carboy, to take the beer off the trub. Trub is sediment, a muddy residue at the bottom of the carboy, a byproduct of brewing. Racking the beer to a clean carboy improves the eventual flavor.
But all that trub is rich with yeast, right? So why should I buy more packets of yeast when I’ve got a couple carboys full of lager-style yeast at home already?
After we got the kettle going outside, I showed Dave how I racked the beer; then we covered the tops of the emptied carboys, but didn’t clean out all that yeast-rich trub in the bottoms. Once the lager was done, we could pour the new corn lager into the old carboys, and start another population explosion, right?
As back up, I did buy another packet of yeast at the store, and we smacked it, bursting the sleeve of yeast inside so the package began to swell. When we finished brewing we used half of that packet in a clean carboy, as we normally do; a sort of neutral proof for the experiment. And we poured the rest of the newly brewed corn lager on top of the carboys with the Czech pils trub and the other with the Budvar lager trub, hoping for the best.
Then we all went out for Mexican food. Yum! Nothing like fajitas, enchiladas, and burritos after a busy day brewing.
When we got home that night I checked the carboys – the two with the old trub were going gangbusters! The airlocks on top of the carboys have water in them, and the fermenting beer sends bubbles up through the airlocks, blup, blup, blup, and those two were quite busily bubbling away. I’ve never had beers ferment that quickly, within a few hours of knockout. I’ve had batches start fermenting (a layer of foam forms atop the beer,and the bubblers slowly start going) the next morning, but never the same day before. And those two were fermenting fast.
I was concerned they might blow the airlocks off the top, so I siphoned them from the 4-gallon carboys they were in to sterile 6-gallon carboys. And moved them from the warm dining room downstairs to the cooler garage.
The third carboy wasn’t percolating much a day later, so I gave it all of the yeast packet that evening. When it began fermenting the other two were pretty much already done. Here are all six carboys; the three in back are my regular lager, the three in front have the corn lager. The trub is the layer of sediment in the bottom of the carboys.
It all makes me wonder if I could reserve batches of yeast to the back of a fridge and re-use them in the future, rather than buying new packets every time. It’s probably easier to just keep buying new packets, and let the experts do the quality control for me, rather than risk 10 gallons of beer on an experiment. I often go a year before doing the same style again. Still, I do use that Irish ale yeast strain fairly often …
OmbudsBen 
Of course you can save yeast for later. How do you think they did it in the old days before there was a brewing supply store?
Jim has done that with “special” lager yeasts from unpasteurized commercial beer and it worked just fine. The yeast basically go into a dormant state until they have some more food to eat.
I think in the oldest days (until the discovery of the microscope) they let airborne yeast settle on the wort and start fermentation–must have tasted awful, but they didn’t know better. Once they isolated yeasts, sure, they reserved some for the next batch, but they also brewed (and brew) more frequently than I do. I guess I’m just concerned about contamination. Perhaps I’ll try reserving some of the trub for a few months in the back of the fridge.
The thing is, if I go to the trouble of spending a day buying ingredients and brewing, it’d be a drag if I used yeast stored for half a year or more and it fermented slowly, while airborne yeast contaminated the batch.
This was an awesome post Ombud. I’ve been meaning to come back and comment and read the rest where I first finished off.
I’ve been wanting to start home brewing but I simply don’t have the time or room to do it so I must say I’m quite envious of you. Not to mention the knowledge you have of it.
On a similar note… my sister-in-law gave The Deistette a batch of friendship bread last year. You ever heard of it?
It’s pretty tasty bread. The liquidy batch of starter mix has yeast in it that stays just goes from friend to friend as it gets separated and added to.
Oh wait… friendship bread, cold lager beer with a little summer sausage on April 5th. Now THAT would be a treat.
Go ‘Stros!!!
I have heard of friendship bread; like your household, Mrs. O has exchanged batches with some people; it is tasty.
I sympathize with you as far as lack of room; my equipment is pigeonholed and stuffed in various corners of our garage.
As far as time, however, brewing is two to five afternoons a year, depending on how many batches I want to do. I usually do at least a couple batches a year, so that would be only two afternoons.
A month or so later, it’s another afternoon to bottle it, but it doesn’t really take much time.
Regarding your ‘Stros–Houston does have a couple hitters I like. But as far as pitching goes:
Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Zito & Bumgarner, Giants fans’ dream come true. 😀
We used to save the yeast from particularly good batches to reuse. If I remember correctly, it’s good for about 2-3 months (although it’s possible it’ll last longer).
Be sure to post after you’ve tasted your corn lager. I’m interested in how it all turns out.
Hey Robin, I racked the beer last weekend and kept a small taste — it’s going to be lighter than my lager usually is (although I upped the amount of grain called for in the recipe) and it might be a bit sweeter. Hard to tell, at this stage of the game.
We’ll bottle in mid-February, so I’ll have an even better sense then.
Yes, I’m thinking of trying to sterilize a container, then fill it with yesaty trub and seal it good, and toss it in the next batch; I’m looking at my next ale batches with this in mind.
I enjoyed this post; couldn’t be written any better. Itreminds me of my old bud. He always kept talking about brewing. I will send it to him. Am sure he will have a good read. Thanks for sharing! 🙂