Capturing bottle dregs

You will definitely have a decrease in vitality of the yeast and bacteria you collected. But I would imagine you can still get some fine results, if there is no contamination. Throw some wort in there and see if it gets going.

 

i dont think you're going to have any viable yeast/bacteria. Water expands when it freezes and will lyse the cell

 

Agree with BB, not likely to have much live yeast left. In any event you'd have to build it up to pitchable volume so go-ahead and make enough wort for a 12 oz bottle and see if the yeast do anything.

 

For future reference, if you're looking to repitch from bottle dregs timing is always of the essence, especially if you don't know the age of the bottle(s). Before you start drinking, have some prepared, cooled and sealed wort in a jar (or bottle) and when you decant the sourced beer into a glass, pour the dregs into the jar/bottle (open/close the jar quickly to minimize the risk of contamination). Your goal is to get the yeast into the wort and under an airlock as soon as possible. The dregs from a six pack should be sufficient to get working in 8-10 oz of wort in a 12 oz bottle. Once that ferments itself up you can repitch that into a growler of wort for a couple of days prior to brewing your 5-gallon batch. Ideally you'll be moving from the bottle to the growler and then from the growler to the full batch when the yeast is at full krauesen.

 

I have tried to collect Dregs before and i had forgotten them in the freezer for more than a year , they worked out fine after i made a starter you should be fine .

 

It's a common misconception, but Yeast doesn't die if frozen, they just go dormant.

 

Ready, fight!

 

Some will die and some will live. The faster you freeze them the better. A very good way is dipping a tube in a ethanol bath with dry ice in it. It's not the expansion but the crystal formation. Flash freezing prevents the crystals. Ymmv

 

Just to protect myself before someone jumps on it, the comment above was in reference to regular freezer temperatures, healthy yeast to start with, and short-to-medium-term storage. I also don't mean to insinuate that the yeast doesn't die at all, but rather that there will be enough left alive that you don't have to worry too much about it.

(Ideally you want to add a cryprotectant, but that's more applicable to commercial qty & scale)

Actually, if what I've read is correct, the opposite is true. Flash freezing results in less viable yeast cells than reducing the temperature slowly. I'm not over the exact process, but slow freezing prevents the yeast from going into 'shock', and allows them to go dormant. Flash freezing shocks the yeast and can kill them off definitely.

 

I'm just going to post one of many results when searching "yeast freezing protocol"
http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/technical-documents/protocols/biology/yeast-growth-protocols.html

Key points are fast freeze. There is no shock because it's fast. This is the same reason you thaw cells as fast as possible. Second, use a cryoprotectant. Third, home freezers(-20C) are ok but you are better putting them in a non cycling unit like a chest freezer. This pretty standard cell handling stuff.

 

Check to see if the brewery that made the beer you liked used the same yeast at bottling. Some places use a champagne yeast for bottle conditioning.

 

There is really only one way to find out... give them some wort!