TABLE OF CONTENTS

Yeast Slants For The Homebrewer

In this tutorial I'll take you through the entire process from
making the blank slants to pitching a batch.
There will be three lessons to this tutorial.

Intro....page 2
Lesson 1: Blank Slants...page 3
Lesson 2: Inoculating a Slant.page 7
Lesson 3: Growing up to Pitching Volumes..page 14
Glossary.page 20

1. Creating blank slants

2 Inoculating w/ yeast and bring the colony up to storage
levels.
3. Growing the colony up to pitching levels in preparation
for Brew Day.
NOTE: In brewing you need to be sanitary. In yeast culturing

you must be sterile (or as close to it as a home yeast farmer

can get). I have had excelent results with these methods. I
myself am an amateur and am learning as I type this, so if
your cousin Bob the microbiologist, contradicts or
corrects my methods then great, let Bob manage your
brewing yeast. Ok, enough with the B.S., let's get started.

Lesson #1 - Blank Slants

First we need blank slants. You can buy pre-slanted tubes,
but that takes the fun out of it. For the blanks we need:
- some slant tubes w/ screw top lids (available at
morebeer.com)
- a auto-clavable test tube rack (available at morebeer.com)
- agar (available at an Asian grocer)
- plain light DME (Dried Malt Extract, available at your
local homebrew supply store)

To prepare the medium mix 15g of DME, 6g of agar and

300ml of water (scale this recipe to fit your needs). Bring
this almost to a boil.

Here we have the agar and DME. I get the telephone brand agar from a
Thai/Asian grocer.

In the mean time I've boiled the slant tubes and lids and set
them aside in the tube rack.
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Next put about and inch of water in your pressure cooker.

Insert the tubes , rack and all. This is why the rack needs to
be autoclavable. Pressure cook them bad dads at 15psi for 20
min.

Take the still hot growth medium solution and fill the slant
tubes about 1/3 full. I use the business end of a turkey baster
as a funnel. Don't worry that the growth medium is all
chunky looking, and you spilled it all over the table, yourself
and the outside of the tubes. The next step will fix that.
Place the slants at a 45 degree angle to cool and solidify. For
storage, they dont need to be refridgerated. I put my blanks
in a zip lock bag and through them in my brew equipment
closet.
There you have it. You now have blanks slants ready to be
inocculated. In our next installment, we will inoculate the
slant with a yeast strain from a White Labs tube

Installment #2 Inoculating a Slant

OK, In this installment we will inoculate some slant from
the blanks we made in the last installment. I will be using a
White Labs tube of Trappist Ale. First lets look at some of
the equipment we will need for this step.
1. Some blank agar slants
2. Inoculation loop
3. Alcohol lamp w/ denatured alcohol
4. Yeast.

The first thing I do is bring the yeast to room temperature.

Next I boil an empty slant tube and its lid to sterilize them.
This will be used to house our mother colony while were
working. When the yeast is up to room temp, I pour a very
small amount into the mother tube (about tsp). That is
more than enough to inoc many slants. I pitch the rest of the
White Labs tube into a starter for a future brew session.

Heres the stuff.

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This is how to hold the equipment properly. I hold the tube

with the mother culture and the soon to be inoculated slant
in my left hand . In my right hand I hold the loop kind of
like a chopstick. This frees up my thumb, fore and middle
fingers to manipulate caps.

Next, heat the loop from tip to handle with the lamp (Get
that baby good and red hot!).

While the loop cools (only takes about 5 seconds) remove

the lid of the recipient slant and flame the
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opening. Flaming the tube opening causes a convection that

sterilizes the tube opening and the air in the tube. Also you
want to try to work directly above the flame. Thats because
your working in a sterile column of air, and since heat rises
bacteria cant float downward into your work area. (Warning
fire is hot. Need I say more?)

Now gently rub the loop on the surface of the growth

medium upward in a zig-zag pattern . Once again be careful
not to touch the side of the slant on the inside. Re-flame he
tube opening and replace the cap.

Now dip the loop into the culture to get some yeast on the
loop. You wont see any on there, but trust me enough is
there for us. Try not to touch the inside of the slant with the
loop. Sure the loop and the slant are both sterile, but it is this
attention to detail that makes good brewers great brewers.

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Repeat this procedure for as many slants as you want to

streak. I usually do four slants for each new strain. When I
get down the last one, I use it to steak out 4 more, and toss
the last one.
Now just let the slants sit out at room temperature for 6 or 7
days to grow up to storage levels. After a day or two you
will begin to see a whitish film growing on the surface of the
medium. IMPORTANT: Burp those bad dads daily for the
first two days and twice daily thereafter. If you do not, co2
will build up pressure and

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when you open the lid the yeast, agar and all will shoot out
of the tube like a cork pop gun. Ask me how I know.
After 7 days put your slants in the fridge for storage. If they
are clean, healthy, sterile slants they should last up to a year.
Oh, and yes, these tubes and lids are boilable and reusable,
assuming you took care to purchase gear that is autoclavable.
OK, you know have free yeast forever. In the next
installment we will look at growing a slant up to pitching
volumes.

Lesson #3 Growing a Slant up to Pitching Volumes

In this final lesson we will bring a slant out of storage, and
through successive stages, grow it up to an adaquate number
of cells for pitching into a five gallon batch of beer.
Well need a few things:
-a vessel or vessels to house out starters. I use three
erlenmyer flasks. A 50ml, 250ml and a 1000ml. If you dont
have flasks mason jars work well.
-an inoculated slant with the yeast of your choice
-some aluminum foil
-dryed malt extract
-inoculation loop
-alcohol lamp w/ denatured alcohol
Heres a slant with a colony of WLP001 Cal Ale

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The yeast may not cover the entire surface of the growth
medium. Thats not a problem.

Open both tubes (the yeast slant and the 2ml of water) and
flame the opening of both as we learned to do in the
previous lesson.

First I boil my 50ml flask (this is easier that boiling the wort
in such a small flask) some foil that will be the cover for the
starter and an empty slant with its lid, to sterilize these
things.

Pour the 2ml of water into the slant tube with the yeast.
Flame your loop and use it to gently scrape the surface of
the growth medium to loosen the yeast into the water. Its
OK if you get some of the agar in with it.
I get put 2ml or 3ml of sterile water in my empty flask. I
will use this water to help loosen the yeast of the growth
medium and liquify it enough to be able to pour it into the
50ml flask. But well get to that in a minute.
Prepare 18ml of starter wort at about 1.025 gravity in the
50ml flask. Let it cool room temperature or so.
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Heres the 20ml starter, fermented out completely after 24

hours. We see that the yeast has multiplied considerably.
Now simply make a 200ml starter at a 1.040 gravity in the
250ml flask and let it cool to room temperature.
Flame the openings of both flasks, then dump the 20ml
starter into the 200ml of wort. Once again cover this with
some sterile foil and let it ferment out for 24 hours. Its that
easy.

Now dump the yeast into your little starter and cover it with
the sterile foil.
Let this ferment out for 24 hours.
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At this stage I put my 1000ml starter on a stir plate and let it

go for 2 days to ferment out completely. At this stage you
can pitch it into a batch of beer or store it in the fridge with a
bung and airlock for a few days to a week. It best to pitch as
soon as possible.

Heres the 200ml starter after 24 hours.

Now make 800ml of starter wort at a gravity of 1.040 in the
1000ml flask and repeat the last steps.
-flame both flask openings
-dump 200ml starter into 800ml wort
This concludes our final lesson in Yeast Slanting for the
Homebrewer. It was intended as a cursory tutorial and is by
no means all inclusive. Many people farm there yeast
different ways, but as I have previously stated, this is how I
do it, and it works for me. I hope this has been helpful.
Feel free to contact the author with suggestions on how I can
improve this document at:
rich@baronphork.com

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Glossary

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GLOSSARY

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INDEX

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