I have about three bottles of Isolation Ale from Odell Brewing. They bottle condition there beer so there is a little yeast cake on the bottom. The bottles are about a year old and I was thinking of culturing the yeast form them to put in to a Imperial Pale Ale that I’m getting ready to brew for a little extra flavor. My question is being that they are a year old would the yeast still be good?
Possibly. You could try to make a mini-starter to see if the yeast is still viable. If you get no activity, you aren’t out much.
I would rather plate them and pick colonies.
If you can’t do that then try pouring into a mini starter. I don’t see why they wouldn’t still be alive. There are probably a few hundred if not thousands cells still alive down there for sure.
I’ve cultured yeast from bottle conditioned bottles before. It was Erdinger weissbier (I think). I made a small 1L starter at 1.025. After 2 days, I stepped it up to a 1.5L starter at 1.040. Since you’re doing an Imp. PA, you’ll probably want to step it up one more time to get enough yeast to ferment a high OG batch. Up to say 2, maybe 2.5L starter.
Good luck!
P.S. If you were to start with a standard low grav. (1.045) pale Ale, you could harvest the yeast and use 1/3 of the cake for the Imperial (up to 1.080) and save 2/3 for some other beer.
How about I ship you a fresh bottle?
