yeast ranching, part i

okay, it's not enough to have control over the entire brewing process, it's not enough to grow our own hops, now i've gotta be a yeast rancher. i've had the equipment sitting in brewery storeroom #2 for several months now, crying out with loneliness every time i opened the box to get DME for a starter. plus, this next brew will feature double yeasts, so i figured, now is really the time to get at it.

so last night i made slants. slants are tests tubes that get filled with a sterilized malt extract and agar solution, heated to make the goo runny, then put on their side (slanted) to let the goo harden in a way that exposes lots of surface area. then, later (that is, tomorrow) i'll take some yeast and put it on the surface of the goo and it will grow, and i'll have a yeast colony from which to draw for future beers.

that's the idea, at least. making slants is really quite simple, but i ran into every problem imaginable.

first, of course, the flask that i wanted to use would not fit on my burner. so after searching for and melting several grates, i gave up and went with my backpacking stove. that worked well until, of course, i got a boilover. how could i have forgotten that i'd get a boilover? it's guaranteed for homebrewers. the camp stove is not exactly stable, so i could not easily remove the flask when the boilover hit. but i pushed on, and added the agar, and got another boilover, this one, enormous. that was the end of that.

so i got my 2L flask and redid the procedure in that with a different burner, upon which the 2L flask fit just fine. it had boilovers too but they were a little more manageable. what was not manageable was melting the agar. the gorram stuff just clumped and clumped. "stir it" said the internets, but you know, it's really really hard to get any kind of stirring implement down to the bottom of a 2L flask. eventually i dumped everything into my smallest all-clad pot and finished it up in there. i never did get rid of all the clumps by the time i'd decided to pour.

pouring. bleh. i don't have a funnel small enough for the slants, much less a steady hand. agar goo everywhere. fortunately, once it hardens, it is quite easy to clean. and once we got them into the pressure cooker (to sterilize them) everything seemed to go well. heck if i know whether i did 15psi, but i sure did 15 minutes.

at the end, there was DME everywhere (can't stand that stuff), burned chunks of goo stuck to the bottoms of two flasks, wort all over, and several dirty pots. hops graciously cleaned it all up, even the inside of the 2L flask, which is impressive.

after pressure cooking i slanted the slants and went to bed. this morning, 3 of 8 look "perfect" and several of the others have lots of bubbles. i dunno if the bubbles will matter: i doubt it.

anyhow, i took copious notes and next time everything will go smoothly. i can buy slants preloaded with agar but i'd feel like a tool, because making my own is supposed to be so "easy".

(also i think i overpaid for the agar. they say it's a buck down at the asian supermarket, i got it for 7 from the homebrew shop. maybe the homebrew version is "lab quality" or something. sure.)