MalFet

Recipes 

Are you planning to freeze the yeast?

If so, you might be fine, but it would be much safer to use a pressure cooker to sterilize properly.

If you aren't planning to freeze, this isn't really the right thread for your question, so if you have follow-ups you should head over to the yeast washing thread. That said, boiled water should be sufficiently sanitized.

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"Be excellent to each other." -Benjamin Franklin

bojacked

Recipes 

Hey Malfet, I neglected to mention that the whole point of this was to freeze the yeast so I can store them for a long time.

shushikiary

Recipes 

Well, I just want to warn all of you to something MalFet told me earlier that he was correct on....

ALWAYS USE A PRESSURE COOKER. I attempted to grow some yeast out of a bottle of gavroche french red ale that I got and that worked out great. But I only used star san when putting the yeast into vials with the glycerin, and did not sanitize the glycerin, and now I have attempted to re-grow the yeast... EVERY vial has a bacterial infection.

I have about 5 other yeasts frozen besides that one at the moment, and they all came back just fine, but on all of them I used the pressure cooker.

It's not worth the risk, they are cheap and easy to use, just get one and use it!

Note that I've found that cooking the wort to use for your first step up starter (from the vial) in a pressure cooker has been pretty handy in making sure the yeast grow and nothing else, and make sure that you put that glycerin in the vials when you put them in the pressure cooker so its sterilized as well before you put yeast into the vials.

Thundercougarfalconbird

Recipes 

I've been starsan-ing everything with great results. I do need to invest in a pressure cooker the more I use my glycerin I suppose.
My yeast's activity tends to be unnoticeable for the first day or two of starter fermentation. But by the third day things are always going great.

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The best beer I ever made was the next one I brew.

MalFet

Recipes 

If you are plating out your samples and getting pure cultures with just StarSan, more power to ya. There are enough counter-examples, though, to suggest that you are just getting lucky. If you are not plating them out, what makes you think your samples are pure? In any case, best practices call for sterilization, which starsan does not provide.

StMarcos

Recipes 

Def getting lucky. Really ought to use hepa hoods for all work after opening the autoclave.

Thundercougarfalconbird

Recipes 

Oh, I'm not arguing the necessity of quality sanitation. Just marveling at my luck I suppose.

__________________
The best beer I ever made was the next one I brew.

Nightbiker

Recipes 

we're supposed to put the glycerin in the pressure cooker TOO? Won't that ruin the glycerin? Its the ONLY thing I haven't been 'autoclaving'.

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GOT BEER?
FERMENTING:
LAGERING/CONDITIONING:Simply Sweet Mead
Kegged: Bad Brown Ale (Brown and a not so good Porter blend).
Bottled:

Plans: Belgian Strong Dark Raisin Ale, Trippel,

MalFet

Recipes 

Most definitely, you want to nuke the glycerine too.

__________________
"Be excellent to each other." -Benjamin Franklin

orangehero

Recipes 

What do you recommend to transfer the yeast? I bough a 10 mL Mohr pipette, but the opening is too narrow to suck up yeast slurry. I'm thinking about getting a stainless turkey baster with a screw-on needle tip, but the bulb is probably not autoclavable.