Yeast on a plate!

So the biggest key ingredient that I have found in my (very) limited brewing experience is yeast. I started brewing with Cooper's Dry Ale yeast, but kept finding that my beer kept turning out too sweet. I now use liquid yeast, either from Wyeast or White Labs.

As a biologist, it seemed like it would be more fun to start making frozen stocks of the yeast. I had two sitting around in my fridge for my next batches... I quickly streaked out plates and left them out at room temperature over the weekend.


Two days later at room temp... colonies are clearly visible!



Today I set up a liquid culture so then I'll be freezing it down in 50% glycerol and keeping at -80 degrees C until I want to use this yeast again... Then you just streak a new plate, pick a colony and grow into a starter culture for pitching.