All right, you can all stop worrying now, the Yeast family are fine.
After transferring my captivated yeast colony to a larger container, it looked like all activity had ceased. Turns out they were starving: the SG(*) had dropped to about 1014, which is way below the comfort zone of my budding buddies.
(*) The specific gravity of a liquid describes how much more dense than water it is. In the case of wort, it is indicative of how much sugar is still available for the yeast to munch, and hence to grow, on.
So I topped up the broth with some extra wort, cleverly calculated to be of a sufficient SG to come up with a total of 1040 again, which should be enough (*) to get the yeast going again.
(*) But not too much. Yeast can pretty picky and delicate, especially at the cultivating stage. It wouldn't do to overcompensate by dousing my recuperating colony with wort of, say, SG 1080. Just like you don't save a starving child by forcefeeding it a double Whopper with extra cheese.
So, feed the hungry so the thirst shall have drink. Eventually. The Yeasts were happy with theirextra bento boxes, and after a few hours, a nice white head had reformed on top of the wort (no pic, you'll have to take my word for it).
With still about 4 days to go till brewing day, I heeded the advice of the learned and stopped feeding the yeast for a while. Fitted the bottle with an airlock and allowed them to come to rest for a bit.
Three benefits from this resting period:
After transferring my captivated yeast colony to a larger container, it looked like all activity had ceased. Turns out they were starving: the SG(*) had dropped to about 1014, which is way below the comfort zone of my budding buddies.
(*) The specific gravity of a liquid describes how much more dense than water it is. In the case of wort, it is indicative of how much sugar is still available for the yeast to munch, and hence to grow, on.
So I topped up the broth with some extra wort, cleverly calculated to be of a sufficient SG to come up with a total of 1040 again, which should be enough (*) to get the yeast going again.
(*) But not too much. Yeast can pretty picky and delicate, especially at the cultivating stage. It wouldn't do to overcompensate by dousing my recuperating colony with wort of, say, SG 1080. Just like you don't save a starving child by forcefeeding it a double Whopper with extra cheese.
So, feed the hungry so the thirst shall have drink. Eventually. The Yeasts were happy with theirextra bento boxes, and after a few hours, a nice white head had reformed on top of the wort (no pic, you'll have to take my word for it).
With still about 4 days to go till brewing day, I heeded the advice of the learned and stopped feeding the yeast for a while. Fitted the bottle with an airlock and allowed them to come to rest for a bit.
 |
| Airlock. No seriously. |
Three benefits from this resting period:
- I won't have to keep feeding the yeast for 4 more days. It's a bit of a hassle, what with the risk of infection imposing a serious level of sanity from my part.
- Extending from this, I will have a manageable volume of yeast starter by the time I need to pitch it, instead of 5 liters of the stuff
- the yeast, which now somewhere its 100th generation since I started cultivating it, can have its first fling with anaerobic respiration and (yay) alcohol
Tomorrow evening, D-day-minus-one, I'll feed it again so it'll be all ready and gung-ho by the time I get to pitch it on D-day.
Till next time!
Greetz
Jo
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