yeast washing question

hey all,

So I went to wash my yeast last night after I racked to a ipa to a secondary for dry hopping. I go to get my water that I had already boiled and cooled to dump in the carboy, per the yeast washing instructions. Well the water smelled like popcorn (from the pot being used for cooking popcorn) and I decided to dump it. The yeast cake was exposed to air for about 40 min before I could boil and cool just enough new water to cover all the yeast in the carboy. I then decided to leave the rest of the work until tonight. (It was 1am and I had to be up in 4 hours for work). The carboy is capped, in the dark and at about 68F. Will I still be able to wash this yeast and re-use it?

Being that it was still in the carboy your are probably OK. Less likely to get anything in that small opening.
Did you leave any beer at all on top of the yeast?
Did you go ahead and pour the water in the carboy?

There was a little beer left in the carboy on top of the yeast cake, but some of the yeast (in the center "hump" of the carboy) was exposed to air for about 30-45min before I could get a small amount of water boiled and cooled to pour in there. Once I poured in the water, make sure no part of the yeast cake was exposed to air, I capped the carboy and left it alone. My intentions were to finish the wash and collection tonight (roughly 20 hours after draining the carboy).

anyone? yeast experts??

Did you keep the cap on the carboy?

At any rate, I've washed yeast I've left covered by a bit of beer after a week or so. I doubt the yeast know the difference.

My theory is, the amount of stuff in the air you sucked into the carboy when racking the beer, faaaaar outweighs whatever might fall into the opening over 40 minutes.
I vote you are totally fine.

Cool, thanks guys.

When I'm racking beer, I use a piece of paper towel dipped in starsan to act as a filter. But to ease your fears, nothing much lives in fermented beer as the acidity is too high and the O2 levels are too low. So the few microbes that did get into your beer/yeast were highly stressed and outnumbered about a trillion to 1. So you should be fine.

Clem