washing yeast from dry hopped beer
 

hey all,

Is it a good idea to try and wash yeast from a carboy that I've dry hopped with 2oz of hops? Usually when I want to wash yeast and dry hop, I transfer to a secondary to avoid this issue. I was lazy this time, and just threw the hops in the primary, but I want to save the yeast. Will the hops settle below the yeast when washing via the method shown in the sticky? Or is it wiser to just toss the yeast...

Thanks!

Just toss the yeast. Washing will separate the yeast from the trub, but it won't rinse away the hop oil coating the yeast.

It's not worth the $4-7.

Is there that much of a difference between 2oz used for dry hopping and 2 oz used in the boil? (assuming the boiled hops made it all the way to the fermenter)

i've never had a problem re-using yeast after dry hopping

No. Washing will be perfectly fine. It will remove hop oils and debris, which is more important, but even if it didn't, that's not going to affect the short term viability of your yeast. You're good to go!

This, and to hell with yeast washing for me, I just pitch measured slurry, dry hopped or not.

this is the first i hear about the hop oils on yeast being a problem, i always just scoop up a 1/4 cup of slurry into the next beer.

That been my experience as well. I've counted up to 97% viability on slurrys with several oz of boiled hops and had no problem with the yeast. That's why I was wondering what the difference might be with dry hops.

That's really interesting. You always read about yeast health with higher gravity or highly hopped beers. Is it possible they were viable but still sick or mutated? What did you use, trypan? What a bummer, I just threw out a HUGE cake of Bell's yeast.

Well, I'm not sure how it really effects highly hopped beer. My beers are around 20 IBUs, and I have yet to dry hop a beer. If dry hops and boiled hops have the same effect as others have said then my results likely apply to the OP.

My first counts were with 0.4% trypan blue, but I have switched to 0.01% methylene blue. I did quite a few comparison counts at different concentration of both and the methylene blue counts are about the same as trypan. Methylene blue I can get at the pet store, and it's what White Labs uses. (FWIW 0.1% methylene blue seems to kill the yeast if you let it incubate to long)

This is my procedure:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/11/counting-yeast-cells-to-asses-viability.html