beernbourbon said:
Holy cow! 12+generations??? How in the world do you do that?? I've heard of some of the guys talk about 4 or 5...... that would be so cool to get that many brews out of my yeast. The cost savings alone...... <my little calculator brain is spinnin' up> I can't imagine how much you guys spend on yeast for just one brew.
Err....the same way you do 1 generation...just 12+ times. Honestly, have you tried doing X+ generations on a homebrew scale? I get bored of the same yeast profile after 4-5. Besides, as homebrewers very few of us brew often enough to take advantage of the practice.
I do it a few times a year. But, you have to brew back to back batches in order to do it. It works great for good floculators. English yeasts are perfect. These yeasts ferment and floc out fast, so they are still nice and healthy when the beer has finished and cleared. So, you can easily brew a series of english beers once every 7-10 days. Ordinary Bitter, Special Bitter, ESB, IPA, Porter, Imperial Porter, etc. Its customary to progress from low to high gravity, light to dark beer, low to high hops. But, its not required.
It can work for moderate floculant yeasts (CalAle, etc), too. But, they take longer to clear, so the yeast is not quite as healthy by the time you can harvest it. As long as you can harvest within 2 weeks...its still ok.
Low floculant yeasts are a problem though. Hefe, Kolsch, many belgian strains....all are low floc yeasts. These take a long time to clear. Usually 3-6 weeks. By that time the yeast has been without nutrients for a LOOONG time, and is not as healthy. You can still reuse them, but its best to revive them with a starter on a stirplate. The other issue with low flocc yeast, is that if you try and harvest early, you end up selecting for the higher floculant cells (because the really low floc yeast is still floating in the beer). Within 2-3 generations you won't have the same flocculation characteristics---it happens very fast.
when it comes to those belgian strains, that are so very attenuative (and low flocculating)....a big part of their attenuation is because they don't flocculate. That lets them hang around in suspension for a long time and chew away every last bit of fermentables. If you make them less flocculant, by harvesting too early...they don't attenuate as much. Now you have a yeast that won't make that dry-belgian-blond anymore. Its still just a touch sweet.
One of the major advantages of the homebrew scale is the total freedom to use a different yeast for every single batch. It's complex and expensive to manage multiple strains on the professional scale. There are lots of breweries that won't even consider two strains. Its a very rare brewery that comes on the brewing network and states that they routine use more than 3 yeasts.
Cost savings are ok, but if you really want to save money making homebrew....learn to make those brews that cost a crazy amount of money. You won't ever compete on cost with the low cost stuff, and the medium cost stuff is usually a wash.