Culturing Yeast

It may be Christmas but my mind is never far from 'the next brew'. I still haven't quite decided on what style of beer to brew yet but it is likely to be either a 'Timothy Taylor Landlord' clone or I'm thinking at having a crack at designing an English IPA recipe. The former is just a great beer and very drinkable whilst the latter would be a nice addition to my line up of bottled beers; that lovely extra hoppy  bitterness and floral finish, it's definitely a love it or hate it beer as it pushes the boundaries of bitterness to the edge.
Whatever I decide I'll be using a new strain of yeast, a Brewlab Thames Valley 3, which will be interesting to see what flavour it imparts on the brew.
As it's bought on an Agar Slant you have to grow the colony of yeast up to a quantity that's enough to pitch into a batch of beer, trouble is our house is pretty cold, by brewing terms, the kitchen is currently around 15 - 18c dependent on what time of the day you go in there, too cold for growing yeast and a variable temperature is not desirable either.

My book on yeast suggests a temperature of around 22c for growing it up so that is my target, also, looking at my records on brewing with my heating element I get around 22-23c so this would be ideal; yeast doesn't like sharp changes in temperature so this would work well.

I had a brain wave on how to keep the yeast at the right temperature, well two actually, one was to use the egg incubator I made which I dismissed for now (it uses light bulbs for heat) and the other was to use the yoghurt maker we have. After some initial testing using a quantity of water in a bottle I found it was a tad too warm at about 25 -26c but by raising the bottle up I have got it down to about 22 -23c which I think should be ideal for the job.

I'll probably try and get a brew in between now and new year, will have to see how it goes.

Meanwhile in the beer cupboard(s) we have the latest batch of 'Fireside Porter' and 'Foxy Mild' both my recipes and then clone brews of: 'Pendle Witch's Brew', 'Adnams Broadside' and 'Black Sheep Ale' enough to keep me going :-)