Lawnmowers and Weddings.

Summer is just around the corner, which means that the season for weddings and lawnmower beers is also around the corner.
My friends just got engaged and were kind enough to let me know more than a year in advance a rough date for their wedding. This enables me to make several high gravity brews to age to perfection in time for their wedding. I have chosen a two pronged approach, one high gravity Baltic porter fermented with a lager yeast and a newly back from the dead Oud Bruin de Table.


As lawnmower season approaches quickly, and because I am too cheap to buy several yeasts, I decided to kill two beers with one yeast by making a Bohemian Pilsner for me and reusing the yeast for the Wedding Porter.


To accomplish this, I cleaned up the yeast cake from the pilsner.

1. I prepared a 3 liter starter solution. (1/2 cup DME to each pint of filtered water.)
   
   
2. I transfered my Bohemian Pilsner into secondary and dumped the yeast cake into a sterilized one gallon jug.
   
   
3. While a starter solution boiled and chilled the growler full of yeast was getting ready to decant. The expired yeast hulls, hops and proteins will settle out before the yeast and form a layer at the bottom while the yeast remains in suspension.
   
   
4. I then decanted the suspended yeast off the trub and fed it my pre-made starter solution.
   
   
5. In one week, when the starter was done fermenting, I decanted the spent starter wort off the top and fed the yeast another starter solution.
   
   
6. Once the starter was fermented out again, I set it into our fridge to get the yeast to drop out of solution.
   
   
7. I am brewing the porter today. The starter looks separated and I am ready to decant the spent wort off the yeast. I'll pitch into my Baltic Porter this evening.
   

Wish me luck.

Cheers!