Washing Safale S-04

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diS

diS

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I washed S-04 yeast for 1st time yesterday.
After racking beer I put 0.5 l of water in carboy, give it a swirl and left for 30 min. Then I decant some water until I reached that what supposed to be yeast, and pour that in 2 glass jars.

Result after one hour in fridge:

p5150167small.jpg


I hoped that I"ll get 3 layers (water on top, yeast in middle and trub on bottom), but there is no trub as I can see. One thing to note, I used hop bag and filtered wort before racking to primary, so I assume there should be few of trub in it..

I left it in fridge over night, and there is still no darker layer on bottom. Level of brown material dropped down under half of jar.

Is this usable, and what do you suggest to be my next step?
 
Open the jar and make sure it isn't under pressure. It looks like you have thick yeast, beer, and krausen. If that's the case, your jar might bust if you don't vent it soon.
 
It looks good to me. If it sits more than a week you might want to use a starter before using it. Also check out mrmalty.com for proper pitching rates.

On a side note, most people don't wash dry yeast because of it's cost and the DME you need for a starter costs almost as much as the yeast. That said, its still fun to wash and reuse yeast; its a hobby after all.
 
Thanks!
Should I rewash it again and then divide into smaller jars, or this is good for dividing it right now?

@earwig
I often use mrmalty for pitching but I just noticed that there is section for re-pitching form slurry.

I am not sure how to use it properly:
Harvest date- If we set it to earlier time then it means that we should use greater amount of yeast. I assume because of dead cells in mean time?
Yeast concentration- how to find out how many cells are in ml (billion/ml), and adjust scroll properly?
Non-Yeast percentage- This is percentage of trub and liquid in jar?

Also, do I really have to use DME for starter or I can use some other sugar (dextrose, cane sugar..)?

Thanks again!
 
In regards to the yeast calculator you are should be fine leaving the defaults where they are, however it looks like you have minimal non yeast material and the slurry is probably on the thicker side. Your assumption about the harvest date seems correct.

If you are not storing the rinsed yeast very long you can get away without making a starter. I used rinsed yeast from a month ago without a starter and it started fermenting fast and strong.
 
Sugar is not good for starters.
I pay $2.40 or so for Fermentis Ale yeasts, I would not consider washing it. You lose all the convenience of dry yeast in addition to needing to Oxygenate your wort, which I don't need to do with a freshly rehydrated pack of yeast.
 
Then I decant some water until I reached that what supposed to be yeast, and pour that in 2 glass jars.
Click to expand...
I believe you did it incorrectly.. the water that you decanted is what should have went into the jars. What you have there is a jar full of trub I believe. The purpose of washing is that the heavy stuff ( trub) falls to the bottom, and the yeast stays in suspension longer. Put your initial water into the carboy with the trub and swirl it up really good. ( I recommend laying the carboy on its side after getting everything all swirled up) Let that settle for about twenty minutes or so. You should see 2-3 distinct layers. carefully tilt the carboy up and pour THE TOP LAYER ( the water) Into another container and again let it set a few minutes....then again pour that top layer into your storage jars making sure they are completely full... I have found that by laying the carboy on its side I do not disturb the layers and the second step is really unnecessary. Just go from carboy into storage jars......always make sure everything is clean and sanitized and boil your water for several minutes then let it cool before use.
 
samc said:
Sugar is not good for starters.
I pay $2.40 or so for Fermentis Ale yeasts, I would not consider washing it. You lose all the convenience of dry yeast in addition to needing to Oxygenate your wort, which I don't need to do with a freshly rehydrated pack of yeast.
Click to expand...
for dry yeats it is not really monetarily beneficial.. it is hower with liquid yeasts and not to mention it is kinda cool to do.
 
OHIOSTEVE said:
for dry yeats it is not really monetarily beneficial.. it is hower with liquid yeasts and not to mention it is kinda cool to do.
Click to expand...


If you use DME to make starters, I agree. However you can also take second runnings from your MLT and save that to make starters for your next batch(es).

Cost to you: nothing.
 
weirdboy said:
If you use DME to make starters, I agree. However you can also take second runnings from your MLT and save that to make starters for your next batch(es).

Cost to you: nothing.
Click to expand...

thats what I do....gonna learn to can from my garden so hoping to get into canning some starter wort this fall.
 
OHIOSTEVE said:
I believe you did it incorrectly.. the water that you decanted is what should have went into the jars. What you have there is a jar full of trub I believe. The purpose of washing is that the heavy stuff ( trub) falls to the bottom, and the yeast stays in suspension longer. Put your initial water into the carboy with the trub and swirl it up really good. ( I recommend laying the carboy on its side after getting everything all swirled up) Let that settle for about twenty minutes or so. You should see 2-3 distinct layers. carefully tilt the carboy up and pour THE TOP LAYER ( the water) Into another container and again let it set a few minutes....then again pour that top layer into your storage jars making sure they are completely full... I have found that by laying the carboy on its side I do not disturb the layers and the second step is really unnecessary. Just go from carboy into storage jars......always make sure everything is clean and sanitized and boil your water for several minutes then let it cool before use.
Click to expand...

I turned carboy on side too and left it for ~half an hour, there was 3 layers in it: lighter on top (I though it was krausen), beer and other stuff on bottom.

My though was that trub will settle after sitting in jar for another 20 mins, but today (24 hours later) it still seems the same, except there is greater level of water.

I know that its not monetary beneficial couse of low costs of dry yeast, but this will be great experience 4me with washing yeast generally.. I would like to introduce process and learn something from practice.. and as said, its a hobby after all.
 
diS said:
I turned carboy on side too and left it for ~half an hour, there was 3 layers in it: lighter on top (I though it was krausen), beer and other stuff on bottom.

My though was that trub will settle after sitting in jar for another 20 mins, but today (24 hours later) it still seems the same, except there is greater level of water.

I know that its not monetary beneficial couse of low costs of dry yeast, but this will be great experience 4me with washing yeast generally.. I would like to introduce process and learn something from practice.. and as said, its a hobby after all.
Click to expand...

what you thought was krausen is suspended yeast. The reason yours still looks like trub is because that is what you put into the jar I believe. It will have yeast in it but next time pour the "water" off the top into your jars. Let that set in the fridge for 24 hours nd you will have a nice layer of white yeast across teh bottom and clear water on top.
 
Ya I agree with OHIOSTEVE. I think what you have is trub. The yeast was in the "water" you decanted.
 
The way you do it is you rack off all your wort, then you shake it all up and get everything into a nice, consistent slurry. Then you pour that slurry into the container and let it settle for 20 minutes to an hour. You should get separate layers and want the middle one.
 
Yeah, next time I"ll decant whole slurry in jar immediately after pouring water in carboy.
One thing that distracted me is that the carboy was pretty messy and dirty, so there was tough to clearly see what is separating on bottom..

Let say that I got yeast separated in my jar, and I kept it in fridge for couple of months or so, how to define which amount of yeast to use in next batch?
I read a lot of threads and articles about this, so I think I"ll know how to approximately count number of cells.
One other thing confuses me:
According to mrmalty, for every month we store our yeast we need to use bigger amount of yeast. That amount differs from eg. 85 ml (if wee pitch on harvest day) to 170 ml after 1 month and 800 ml after 2 months and earlier.
I mean, that is big difference, and also it would be tough to collect 800 ml of yeast, especially when it settles on bottom of the jar in tiny layer..
 
weirdboy said:
The way you do it is you rack off all your wort, then you shake it all up and get everything into a nice, consistent slurry. Then you pour that slurry into the container and let it settle for 20 minutes to an hour. You should get separate layers and want the middle one.
Click to expand...

I believe you are mistaken.. I may be wrong but I have washed yeast several times and you let it settle in the carboy and pour off the top layer into a second container..let it settle again and take the liquid off the top and store that. The yeast settles out after you put it in the fridge....then you decant and use whats in the bottom for your starter.https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/yeast-washing-illustrated-41768/
 

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