Harvesting yeast from a Kloster Andechs Dunkel Weizen?

Greetings Earthlings,

From a recent work trip I have in my fridge a few bottles of various beers from Kloster Andechs.

I was wondering about cloning the wheat beer yeast (I've not done this before).

Is it possible to know if the yeast in the bottle is indeed the yeast used during fermentation, rather than just the carbonating yeast (which is what Franzis Kaner do) - or even if it was bottle conditioned at all ? Maybe I should just ask them

I am of the oppinion that this is the same yeast as what Ayinger use in their wheat beer, as the characteristics of the flavour were very close on my muble palette.

thoughts?


-kt

Being a wheat beer id have thought itd be unfiltered,ie original yeast? PS your avatar makes me salivate

There is a way to tell the difference between strains, but its probably not one you could be bothered with. One way of differentiating yeast strains is to do a giant cell colony. You need agar plates and you allow a single colony of yeast to grow. At the end, you get a puffball like growth and the size and shape is unique to that yeast strain. Then you compare that to all of your other giant cell morphologies and you can identify or rule out what strain you have.
Sounds like too much work for me, thats why I've never done it.

More fun way is to grow up a big starter from the dregs and ferment a batch with it. See what you get. if its bland an neutral, they probably bottle conditioned with a lager yeast.