Yeast Banking - First Slant

I don't think I wrote about making my slants but I created them when I was canning some extra wort for starters. I wrote about that in this post http://blog.ferventbrewer.com/2016/10/canning-wort-for-starters.html. I simply used the methods taught in this blog post https://suigenerisbrewing.blogspot.com/2015/11/easy-home-yeast-banking-and-video.html?showComment=1476448076312#c8864034177591573235 from Sui Generis, it's a much better resource than I could ever be on the subject.

I did have to wait three days to get this much colonization from streaking. There were a couple small colonies after two days but then boom, full slant on day three.

So the next step was to safely (working around my alcohol lamp and flaming lips) poor my sanitized mineral oil into the slant on top of my colonies to preserve them for up to 3 years! With that done I placed them in my refrigerator for safe keeping!

This process does not take much time or effort to accomplish. I may have added 10 minutes to my last brew day to collect and sterilize my wort, slants and mineral oil and to create my agar slants. I now have enough slants to keep 8 different yeast banked which will save me some real money and trips to the brew store over the next couple of years.

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.