How to Cultivate yeast from a bottle of Westons Old Rosie

Westons Old Rosie is an excellent cider and has the added advantage of being bottle conditioned. The yeast in these bottles is viable and makes an excellent yeast for a Turbo Cider or if you are lucky to have an apple tree a real cider. Old Rosie is readily available in Morrisons, Waitrose and Sainsbury's supermarkets and sometimes it is in Tesco's.

What you will need

1) 1 x 500ml bottle of Westons Old Rosie
2) 4 x 1L Apple Juice 100% from concentrate
3) 1 x tsp Yeast nutrient
4) Sterilising solution
5) 1 x 1pt milk bottle or 500ml conical flask
6) 1 x I gallon Demijohn with airlock.
7) A piece of Kitchen Foil
8) Plenty of patience



What to do

1)First of all you need to make sure that the yeast has settled in the bottom of the bottle. Because Old Rosie is a cloudy cider it may take a time to settle. Putting in the fridge for a few days is the best way.

2)Once it is settled and ready to use bring it out of the fridge and leave it to acclimatise to room temperature.

3)Once you cider has acclimatised open it and pour yourself a cider, being careful to leave the yeast and a glug of cider in the bottle



4) Sterilise you milk bottle or conical flask then pour the remainder of the bottles content into it.

5) Now you need to fill this up to within a couple of inches with apple juice and add 1 tsp of yeast nutrient. This is quite important as apple juice is actually low in some of the nutrients that yeast needs in order to grow.

6) Once you have done this you need to cover it with a piece of kitchen foil but remember to sterilise it first. It needs to be fairly loose so that oxygen can get in and carbon dioxide can get out.



7) Now give it a good shake to aerate it.

8) You now have to leave it somewhere warn, 18-21C

9) Give it a good swirl whenever you can, this aerates it and keeps the yeast in suspension .

10) After a few days you should begin to see a white film developing on the bottom.

11) The next stage is to let it settle and then pour off the liquid making sure you leave as much of the yeast behind as possible and a little of the liquid. Discard the rest of the liquid. You can save this and use to make cider vinegar.

12) Now you need to refill with fresh apple juice and repeat stages 5-10.

13) Once this has fermented out you can now grow it on in a demijohn with 3 L of apple Juice.

14) Again let it settle and drain off the liquid as per stage 11.

15) Sterilise your demijohn and airlock.

16) Pour the yeast slurry into the bottom and top up with 3L of apple juice and again 1 tsp of yeast nutrient.

17) Put in the air lock and give it a good shake to aerate again.

18) Leave it again at 18-21C giving it a good swirl periodically.

19) After a few days you should actually see a normal fermentation with plenty of airlock activity.

20) Let it ferment out usually 7-10 days then chill it to get the yeast out of suspension.

21) As before in stage 11 pour off the cider leaving the yeast slurry.

You now have a yeast starter which should be enough to do 30L of TC.

Excellent How To GA, I dont drink cider much but if I get the need will have to give this a try, the Mrs keeps badgering me to make toffee apple cider, I could use this in that :)

Yes you could :thumb:

Ok, I was thinking mine might be dead, because I put it on two weeks ago and was expecting it do something, but it hasn't. I'll get some nutrient in there, some more apple juice and see what I can muster up in a few stages.

I'm a bit suspicious about this though, because Old Rosie is quite a sweet tasting cider for something that is bottle conditioned. I'd have expected it to be completely dry.

I don't know but it could be artificially sweetened or Keeved.

All I do know is it does work. :thumb:

I would perhaps try and take a hydro reading and put in some yeast nutrient.

Still nothing from mine, sadly. It's a good excuse to buy some more cider while my current TCs mature though.

Old rosie Yeast doesn't look as if it is fermenting have you tried taking a gravity reading? It never usually gets going until it you have 3 Litres of it going then it looks like a fermentation. Unlike a Fullers yeast I harvested which going like a mad thing after three days.

Amk I right in thinking that about 4 litres (0.5 + 0.5 + 3) of apple juice are used/wasted in this process?

I have never used liquid yeast or tried to reclaim yeast from a bottle before. Is there a reason why the liquid has to be tipped down the drain, rather than just adding to it gradually?

shearclass said:

Amk I right in thinking that about 4 litres (0.5 + 0.5 + 3) of apple juice are used/wasted in this process?

I have never used liquid yeast or tried to reclaim yeast from a bottle before. Is there a reason why the liquid has to be tipped down the drain, rather than just adding to it gradually?

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You could drink it but it may not be the best of ciders. Because you are encouraging the yeast to grew and not produce alcohol they may undergo different metabolic pathways. I usually leave it to the fruit flies and make cider vinegar for my pickles :whistle: :whistle:

Thanks for explaining.

Cheers

old rosie yeast is just champagne yeast available from any home brew shop.

Yes that may well be true but it is infected with the all important lactobacillus which probably contributes more to the flavour than the yeast alone.

heres the email from Westons that they sent me............
Morning Mark.

The yeast we use is Champagne yeast it should be available from any home brew shop.

saccharomyces cerevisiae – Champagne yeast

Kind regards

Lesley

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.

when creating the starter from yeast harvested earlier, what you shouldn't do is use a plastic bottle with a screw lid - I did, and was convinced that the yeast wasn't doing anything, as no bubbles present, but obviously some scum around top of liquid so something must have happened.
The bottle was on a shelf so I took it down and oppened the lid - KABOOM - really loud bang, that scared the hell out of me. Nothing happened for a short length of time (probably a lot shorter than I think), and then the whole thing started fizzing, and erupted all over me, and the lounge carpet.
luckily I saved enough to use in a ginger beer that I started shortly afterwards.

Lol.I often use plastic bottles for various small amounts of fermenting wine. I put mine in the kitchen near the sink and check the pressure on the bottle with a quick squeeze whenever I'm close - if it's kinda solid then i open the lid to let the pressure out. It's also a give away if they fall over - as the pressure builds the bottom is pushed out and so it's more rounded and the bottle falls over - time to let the pressure out quickly !!

I just thought I'd say that I've tried this and it works! The demijohn is active, and I'll start a new batch of cider in a week or so.

Funny as it smells of cider already, if I compare it to my last few batches of turbo cider it's way better already (and I've not started the main batch yet). I'm not sure why turbo cider (thin apple wine) is called cider at all, as it tastes nothing of the west country cider that I'm used to.

: lactobacillus :rofl:

Thanks graysalchemy :clap:

jimblob said:

I'm not sure why turbo cider (thin apple wine) is called cider at all, as it tastes nothing of the west country cider that I'm used to.

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That's why you need to add malic acid and tannin to replicate the levels found in cider apples, the juice we use is desert or eating apples and lack tannin and malic. I tsp per gallon each is what you need.

If you do that use Old Rosie and allow MLF to take place for 2-3 months (6-10 if you have the patience) then you will have cider that tastes like er...........cider :lol:

:thumb:

With all my turbo ciders so far I've added malic acid, but as it was lacking lactobacillus it tasted like pants... At least that's what I'm guessing?


One other question for you, if I wanted fizzy cider would I have to add more yeast after the 3 month minimum period? If so would you add it at the bottle priming stage? If not when?

Many thanks graysalchemy for your knowledge.

I have never had to add more yeast and my last one was 7-8 months ageing, What i do do is allow a little sediment to go into the bottling bucket and then give it a really good stir prior to bottling. I always get really good fizzy cider by batch priming with 7g/l of sugar. :thumb: