Beer Forum

Anyone ever build up and reuse St Bernardus yeast? If so, how did it turn out? I read in "Brew Like a Monk" that St. Bernardus may still use the origial strain from St. Sixtus brewery and may only be available this way. Westvletern now uses Westmalle strain but used to contract brewing out to St. Bernardus many years ago. I know St. Bernardus 8 is bottle conditioned and I have one in the fridge. Tripel on deck.

scotchpine wrote:Anyone ever build up and reuse St Bernardus yeast? If so, how did it turn out? I read in "Brew Like a Monk" that St. Bernardus may still use the origial strain from St. Sixtus brewery and may only be available this way. Westvletern now uses Westmalle strain but used to contract brewing out to St. Bernardus many years ago. I know St. Bernardus 8 is bottle conditioned and I have one in the fridge. Tripel on deck.

Ok, so I went ahead and used Wlp530 in the Tripel since I had no feedback on this. If nobody has tried this with St Bernardus, can I at least get some tips on building yeast up from a bottle sample. I have never tried this. IE: how many steps (days) might be involved to do this with a stir plate for a pitch into say a 5 gal. wort of 1.075 og? I have yeast nutrient and O2 wand. Would it be a waste of time for some reason?

Something along the lines of:
Dregs into 100mL starter
100mL into 500mL
500mL into 1000mL

And then stepping it up from there as needed for your gravity SHOULD get you close. Of course it is gonna depend on what you hade to start with (quality and quantity) coming out of the bottle.

Thanks Spider. And I guess about 24hr per step graduating from 1.015 then 1.025 then 1.040. If that sounds about right I'll give it a try next time. Would still like to hear from anyone who has tried this with the St Bernardus dreggs too.

spiderwrangler wrote:Something along the lines of:
Dregs into 100mL starter
100mL into 500mL
500mL into 1000mL

And then stepping it up from there as needed for your gravity SHOULD get you close. Of course it is gonna depend on what you hade to start with (quality and quantity) coming out of the bottle.

100mL *might* be a bit much, that first step all depends on what kind of condition the yeast are in. I also like to do 2 steps at 100, 1.020 & 1.030. The idea is to build up reserves before they start propagating. Another good thing to do is add a touch of nutrient at 500mL, 1.040 and every step beyond. I hesitate doing it to the smaller sizes because it's a little tougher to measure accurately & at those smaller steps you're really just doing CPR on them - 500mL is when they've got their heartbeat back & don't need mechanical assistance.... like Spidey does from time to time.