Home-Brewer Jon Cumblad on DIY Beermaking Gear

Definitely yeast culturing and propagation. Yeast requires the right mixture of nutrients, oxygen, and sanitation in order to perform optimally. All of which can be tricky on their own, let alone in conjunction with one another. Through friends, and a great set of circumstances, I came upon a rare strain of yeast from a lambic brewery in Belgium and decided to try to propagate it for future use, which resulted in growing approximately 0.5 milliliters of yeast into easily 200 milliliters of brewable yeast, which would be increased further before brewing.

The process first involved the creation of my Frankenstein stir plate. Commercial stir plate kits are available for around $100 to $200. I opted to make my own. Not because of the money, but because I enjoy having a hand in everything involved in my process.

It started with a plastic junction box. Add an industrial computer server fan, powerful magnets that I harvested from a couple of old hard drives, a variable resistance knob with various wires and resistors, and you get a stir plate box that is able to create a whirlpool in a whopping 5000-milliliter flask. With the power of that stir plate combined with a magnet covered in food-grade plastic, I was able to gradually step up the yeast cell count by introducing a sugar solution [and gradually increase] volume over the period of about a month.

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