Yeast Project: Throwing in the towel (ish)

So I went to bottle the experimental runs of several strains remaining and saw all are developing a pellicle. I didn't want to rely on likely infected samples to judge the quality of the strains nor did I want to wash and store infected yeast for later use. I let the batches sit too long with only foil covering the mouth of the jars I used as fermentors so I'm not too surprised they got infected.

Looking around at all this I realized I'm really biting off more than I can chew with this project and I don't have the time to really assess these strains. I've been thinking over the past few weeks that all the apricot and diacetyl flavors I kept getting in strain after strain was a result of stressed conditions, rather than the yeast's normal flavor profile. I would probably need to brew several small batches to develop some healthy yeast and really see what the strains can do. Right now I don't have the time for it even though I'd like to just hang out and brew all the time. So I am going to do a better job testing out the two brett strains I first got and maybe brew a couple small all brett beers. It's too bad I don't have the time to do a better job with this project because I was given several other brett strains.

I won't say I will never come back to these strains, I'd actually like to have a yeast bank with a few "house" strains. As it is I have many strains banked and in all honesty I'll probably never get around to reusing all the strains I have. I want to do a better job of understanding how to manipulate yeast for different flavor profiles and I feel like trying to go for quantity of strains is interfering with developing quality of understanding.

Unfortunately I still don't think I'm in a place where I can share the strains I received but maybe down the road I will be able to be a more sharing guy.