Yeast Banking 1 - Supplies

I've been following Sui Generis's blog for a while now. He's definately an authority on yeast and yeast handling and he's very good at explaining things so even I can understand them :)

He has a nice video on yeast banking with slants which according to him is simple and will keep yeast usable for up to 3 years. http://suigenerisbrewing.blogspot.com/2015/11/easy-home-yeast-banking-and-video.html

So I went out and bought the supplies I would need to start banking my own yeast. I'm very tired of paying $9 or $10 for liquid yeast cultures every time I want to brew. I wrote about his in my Brewing Budget post. I spent about $130 on all the supplies because I didn't own a pressure cooker which is required to really sanitize the agar, mineral oil and starter wort. The pressure cooker was $60 so the rest cost about $70 to get started. That includes that nice stainless slant rack ($17) which I thought I needed to hold the slants ($19 for 25) while in the pressure cooker.

If I had owned a pressure cooker I could recoup the cost in less than 8 brews but it's going to be more like 14. That's about 5 months worth of brewing for me so the return on investment is a ways out. The nice thing is that pressure cooker is a canner and steamer so I can use it can some wort for starters when I brew and save on DME as well. That will go a long ways in cost savings and convenience I think.

If you're interested in banking your own yeast I highly recommend checking out this blog http://suigenerisbrewing.blogspot.com/. There are several videos on streaking, making agar and yeast wrangling.