Scavenging yeast from delicious commercial beers

Saison Dupont

 

Many of those from Jester King.

 

SN Kellerwiesse is one of the best Hefe strains I've ever tasted and brewed with. I grab a 6 pack and build up the dregs from a few bottles worth. You have to open ferment with it if you want to reuse it though. Per SN, if you do a closed fermentation and repitch it will be neutral on the second run.

 

This goes back almost a decade, but if you are into funk and sour, seems like a place you might start: https://www.themadfermentationist.com/p/dreg-list.html

 

Do they still make that beer? I haven't seen it in a long time and people on Twitter were saying it is defunct. I really hope they're still making it, one of my all time favorite beers.

 

Last time I got it was a year ago when I was in Cali, and I had to go to some random gas station market in the middle of nowhere to find it. That really sucks as this is the best American made Hefe there is.

 

FWIW on the Sierra Nevada website this beer is categorized as “Specialty - Worth The Search” along with Stout, Porter,…

My interpretation of the above is the Kellerweis is no longer a distributed product.

Cheers!

 

I harvested Oberon once in an attempt to make a clone.

 

And...

 

“A brewer with the Dupont yeast is touched by God.” - Michael Jackson

This used to be true but have you (or anyone else) tried it lately? My last two brews with yeast harvested from DuPont were a crash-n-burn.

For the OP: can't go wrong with Heady Topper or Ommegang.

 

It was nothing special. Probably not worth the effort.

 

I was just curious what you thought of it. I used Bell's house strain (same one used in Oberon I think) in a two-hearted clone, and I'm not sure I could tell any difference between that and a previous clone I had done with WLP001, though there were separated quite a bit in time.

 

Not in the past few years.

 

Didn’t have to harvest this yeast, they just gave it away. Well sold it through Bootleg Biology. Can’t wait to brew with it soon.

 

Crooked stave has had some good dregs in the past, although I haven’t seen their stuff around lately. I harvested their CMY Brett strain from St Bretta, and used it in tons of beers as either a secondary or as the primary brett strain. This reminds me, I need to prop up this yeast again as it’s been sitting in my fridge dormant for a while now… now I’m inspired to brew something funky again!

 

A guy at the brewery said they ferment hot to get the orangey ester the yeast makes. How hot he couldn't say, but that beer is done in tall 800 bbl fermenters, so hatter than you would guess.

 

No I purchased the yeast. It was special release they did with 4-5 breweries. I really love the Embrace the funk beers I’ve tried so I purchased that one. The yeast kit is cool and if happen to get a good strain you can mail it to them and they will keep it in their bank. So if you lose yours they send a sample back out too you.