Easy yeast starter

Kirin Iciban

Hello all you homebrewers out there! For a long time I thought homebrewing was dead in Ireland until I came across this board very recently! Great to see!

I've been brewing a little for about two years, partial mashing, a little liquid yeast use, and a few gadgets. I bottle my beer, and have an Anchor Steam beer aging right now. I also make mead, and have a ginger melomel in the carboy right now.

Enough about me. On my travels around Dublin city I found a drink called Malta Goya. Its made from pale and caramel malts, sugar and even hops. This makes an excellent yeast starter and can be also used to propagate yeast.

To make a starter, pour a little room temp malta into a sanitised container and add your favourite yeast. Seal malta bottle and cover container. This is grand but for those who want a short lad time: Leave 2 days, then pour off top liquid leaving yeast slurry at the bottom. Then add more malta etc. until you have a large cell count, for the big beers especially. Volia....easy stater.

To propagate, cold store your favourite store-bought bottle-conditioned beer until you have a nice cake of yeast on the bottom of each bottle. Gently pour off the liquid leaving as much yeast in the bottle. Do this for your six pack. Then pour this yeast liquid into a sanitised container, add the malta goya. Leave to work its magic. Real brewery yeast. Then drink the "left over"
beer.

The Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Coopers and Aventius have nice yeast counts in the bottles. And they are great beers too!

Pick up Malta Goya in the ethnic African shop a few doors up from Fibber Magees on Parnell Street. It comes in 33cl beer type bottles.

Long live brewing.....

Ichiban


TO

bigears

Welcome aboard,

This Malta Goya/beer yeast propagation sounds worth a try - and speaking of Anchor Brewing I imagine their Liberty Ale would have plenty of yeast to try this.

oblivious

Also welcome

I have heard of a few America brewer using this, I didn’t know it was available over hear. Also some health food shops sell LME in 500g amounts; this could also be used to make bigger starters. They also sell rice malt extract which I presume could also be used.

beardybrewer

Anchor Steam.. fantastic beer. If you're ever in San Francisco be sure to arrange a tour months ahead when you buy your tickets. They are every Friday and free. Its a fantastic operation and the free tasting was great. When they found out we were from Ireland they kept the place open longer and got us langers on Old Forhorn

I was thinking of doing this with Chimay Blue. A lot of the belgians you can propagate their yeast. Would certainly be better than spending £5 for a slap pack (and you get the beer too).