How to Cultivate yeast from a bottle of Westons Old Rosie

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
graysalchemy said:
Saccharomyces cerevisiae is also ale yeast and wine yeast and bakers yeast but the strains obviously vary. If it has been used to fermenting cider then it will have adapted to the sugars in apples and not grapes. Plus as I have said it is the lactobacillus which will effect the flavour. You can however buy lactobacilus cultures.


Would I be right in thinking that lactobacillus is the active ingredient in all these probiotic yoghurts that you can buy, so you could replicate by throwing one of these into your brew?
 
narmour said:
Would I be right in thinking that lactobacillus is the active ingredient in all these probiotic yoghurts that you can buy, so you could replicate by throwing one of these into your brew?

The bacteria involved in MLF are Oenococcus oeni, and various species of Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. Lactobacillus casei appears to be the one in probiotic cultures now whether or not this is the one which will be of use I don't know.

Having said all that would you really want to put yoghurt into your cider?
 
I was wondering if you could back-culture bacteria from cheese rind. Since you 'infect' cheese with bacteria from cider, beer and perry (e.g. Stinking Bishop), theoretically you should be able to reverse the process to infect a cider. The rind is probably teeming with all the right stuff to make a really, uh, hearty tasting cider. Put hairs on your chest sort of stuff.
 
Not necessarily. Cider and perry is relatively sterile apart from yeast and the few introduced lactobacillus, cheese on the other hand is far from sterile and will have lot of other bacteria which may be in dominance when the cheese is mature.

It is easier just to get a bottle of old rosie it is readily available and not a bad drink to boot. :thumb:
 
graysalchemy said:
It is easier just to get a bottle of old rosie it is readily available and not a bad drink to boot. :thumb:


I would take issue with this line.... Not one of the booze shops or supermarkets in Belfast had even heard of it!!! :(

I'm having to look for alternatives as the only way I can pick up a bottle of Old Rosie is by internet mail order which comes in at £8 for a bottle when you take postage into account.
 
narmour said:
graysalchemy said:
It is easier just to get a bottle of old rosie it is readily available and not a bad drink to boot. :thumb:


I would take issue with this line.... Not one of the booze shops or supermarkets in Belfast had even heard of it!!! :(

I'm having to look for alternatives as the only way I can pick up a bottle of Old Rosie is by internet mail order which comes in at £8 for a bottle when you take postage into account.

Sorry about that, I would send you some if I had any yeast, but it appears that I have sent members all my yeast and I don't think I have even got any left in my fv's for my own cider next year.

I would perhaps put a post up and see if anyone has a culture of it going I have certainly spread the love of Old Rosie to plenty of members someone surely should have some to share.

Anyone
 
graysalchemy said:
narmour said:
the only way I can pick up a bottle of Old Rosie is by internet mail order which comes in at £8 for a bottle when you take postage into account.

Sorry about that, I would send you some if I had any yeast, but it appears that I have sent members all my yeast and I don't think I have even got any left in my fv's for my own cider next year.

I would perhaps put a post up and see if anyone has a culture of it going I have certainly spread the love of Old Rosie to plenty of members someone surely should have some to share.

Anyone

I would happily forward my yeast when it's done...

...but I would be hesitant at the moment until I know what results I'm going to get.

It was graysalchemy's yeast/bacillus culture from an Old Rosie but the post office (or maybe I) did something really bad to it rendering the yeast completely non-viable. Nothing, not even a hint of a bubble. So the lactobacillus (I hope!) got going producing the classic white skin... but still no fermentation. I eventually had to pitch Youngs champagne yeast to get it going.

Hopefully someone else will have one finishing soon but if you haven't got one sourced in a couple of weeks and you are feeling lucky PM me and let me know and I'll bottle the yeast from mine at racking time (assuming it tastes OK...) and send you it.
 
calumscott said:
graysalchemy said:
narmour said:
the only way I can pick up a bottle of Old Rosie is by internet mail order which comes in at £8 for a bottle when you take postage into account.

Sorry about that, I would send you some if I had any yeast, but it appears that I have sent members all my yeast and I don't think I have even got any left in my fv's for my own cider next year.

I would perhaps put a post up and see if anyone has a culture of it going I have certainly spread the love of Old Rosie to plenty of members someone surely should have some to share.

Anyone

I would happily forward my yeast when it's done...

...but I would be hesitant at the moment until I know what results I'm going to get.

It was graysalchemy's yeast/bacillus culture from an Old Rosie but the post office (or maybe I) did something really bad to it rendering the yeast completely non-viable. Nothing, not even a hint of a bubble. So the lactobacillus (I hope!) got going producing the classic white skin... but still no fermentation. I eventually had to pitch Youngs champagne yeast to get it going.

Hopefully someone else will have one finishing soon but if you haven't got one sourced in a couple of weeks and you are feeling lucky PM me and let me know and I'll bottle the yeast from mine at racking time (assuming it tastes OK...) and send you it.


Thanks... just having a bit of a grumble about my lack of success really... I don't take failure in things like this well!!!

The next couple of weeks will be mental in our house with a newborn so I'm not likely to get this done much before new years. If I remember in my state of exhaustion I will certainly get in touch. I'd be most grateful! :cheers:
 
Firstly, thank you so much GA for such an excellent guide and all your surrounding advice on how to brew a decent 'Old Rosie Resurrected' TC. I'm pleased to say I've currently got as far as the DJ stage and it's bubbling away nicely. In the meantime, I've been slowly stocking up as many cartons of apple juice as I dare without trying to come across as some kind of apple juice addicted weirdo at the supermarket checkout :)

Just in case anyone is interested, I've also managed to follow this guide to cultivate the yeast from a bottle of "Farmhouse Cloudy Scrumpy" made by Gwynt y Ddraig (can't post full URL as I'm too new and apparently it looks spammy). I'm not sure if they sell it in England - I picked it up from a Tesco in Wales when I was visiting family as they didn't sell Old Rosie and it was the only cider I could find that had sediment at the bottom of the bottle.

I'm going to use both yeasts to do 23L batches and will follow the prescribed 2-3 months bulk ageing for MLF. I will let everyone know how the Welsh stuff compares to Old Rosie when it's finished!
 
As I have said before it is actually the bacteria which is most important, so as long as you can cultivate some yeast from the cider and the cider tastes like farmyards then you are most likely going to get some MLF going. The ones to watch are still cloudy ciders as they will have been pasteurised and the yeast will be no good. Fizzy and cloudy is what you will have best results with.

Let us know how it goes as there must be more ciders than just old rosie to try. :thumb:
 
Think i'm going to give this a go on the weekend as I would love some tasty cider in time for summer rather than 'thin' apple wine.

And maybe i've missed something being a newb but is there anything special you have to do when maturing to get mlf or will it just happen?

Cheers
 
chains said:
Think i'm going to give this a go on the weekend as I would love some tasty cider in time for summer rather than 'thin' apple wine.

And maybe i've missed something being a newb but is there anything special you have to do when maturing to get mlf or will it just happen?

Cheers

If you pretty much follow the instructions on this thread you should get good results!
 
narmour said:
chains said:
Think i'm going to give this a go on the weekend as I would love some tasty cider in time for summer rather than 'thin' apple wine.

And maybe i've missed something being a newb but is there anything special you have to do when maturing to get mlf or will it just happen?

Cheers

If you pretty much follow the instructions on this thread you should get good results!

Ok so no extra step necessary for mlf then. Cheers i'll make a start in this soon
 
If you have used Old Rosie culture then it'll be pretty odds on to happen. It can happen by itself from naturally occurring Oenococcus oenni but it's less likely. You can also buy bacterial cultures to add to the FV at the end of fermentation.
 
just a quick question as I am starting to do this later on today, once I have got the yeast grown how long will it last before I have to use it all up? and what is the best way to store it?
 
CheshireCBR said:
just a quick question as I am starting to do this later on today, once I have got the yeast grown how long will it last before I have to use it all up? and what is the best way to store it?

Started mine yesterdat and interested to find out more about this too, Whats the limit for the yeast? Assuming all goes well and I get a big batch of TC on the go can I then just wash and re-use the yeast left behind in that?
 
Like with any yeast the slurry Can be stored for about a month in a sterilised. Jar in the fridge. Any longer and it us likely to get infected or show signs of autolysis. I'd you want to store any longer you need to look at freezing with glycerol or making microbial slants.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top