spliting yeast cultures

[grod31]

look i know all about making starters . What im wondering is can i take a single yeast pack and in sterile enviorments sperate it into a dozen or so small containers called vacutainers[url] https://www.google.com/search?q=vacutai ... UIBigB/url]
Then use these to make starters in the future. maybe add sterile water / yeast food into their new tubes as well.
if your answer is no to all of this.
Can i make a starter as normal then split it into these vacutainers( much harder to do in a sterile environment/further away from the cell count of original culture)

[brewinhard]

I don't see why not, although maybe someone with plating experience will chime in.

You could probably make a starter with your one pack of yeast, let it ferment out, then with a transfer instrument, separate them out into your vials for storage later. Best to keep the yeast under beer rather than distilled water from what I understand. Sanitiation will be crucial, and not all vials will probably make it the duration. How long do you plan on storing them for?

[Charlie]

If we're talking about liquid yeast then the answer is definitely yes. I usually grow a starter up from slants or rinsed yeast, but on occasion I have to replenish my supply. What I do is take a Wyeast or White Labs packet (about 100 ml) and split it into five 20 ml parcels in sterile 25 ml screw cap Pyrex culture tubes (I add neither water nor yeast food), and store them in the yeast fridge at +4C. The 20 ml volume is perfect for making up a 1L starter.

Sometimes the yeast in the packets are sleepy, so if you do this don't count on the starter being at high krausen 24 hrs later, or ready to crash in 48 hrs.

Our first club president had an earned PhD in microbiology, and was very much against culturing or storing dry yeast. He told me why, and I agreed with him at the time, but I don't remember the full text of his argument (and therefore will not relate it). I seem to remember that mixed strains and mutability figured promenently in his objections

Charlie

[Ozwald]

Moved to appropriate sub-forum.

[OddballBrewer]

You have to be-careful in what you order. We use those at the hospital for blood collection and a lot of them have chemicals to prep the blood for testing and once you open them they are no longer sterile because they are under vacuum and will suck in air. I don't think the negative pressure will cause lysis (it doesn't with blood cells) but I am not 100% on that. If you are looking to freeze them, there are a lot of good articles out there.