Cpt_Kirks
Well-Known Member
Assuming I wash and properly store yeast, how many times can I reuse it?
So far, I have not reused yeast, but am about to start trying.
So far, I have not reused yeast, but am about to start trying.
I have washed and stored for 6 months before use with no ill effect, But so much time and fridge space is taken I prefer to pitch on the last cake. On the same cake I have pitched 4 times. After that I start worrying about trub buildup.
How does that work?
You repitch new wort on the yeast at the bottom of the fermenter?
When you rack your beer it's almost impossible to remove all the wort from the fermenter, so if you wanted to reuse that yeast cake you have a couple of options. One is to make a darker beer so as the color difference wont impact your beer that much.
I have washed and stored for 6 months before use with no ill effect, But so much time and fridge space is taken I prefer to pitch on the last cake. On the same cake I have pitched 4 times. After that I start worrying about trub buildup.
High pitch rates can lead to:
* Very low ester production
* Very fast fermentations
* Thin or lacking body/mouthfeel
* Autolysis (Yeasty flavors due to lysing of cells)
No, no no! [brandishes rolled-up newspaper]
Bad brewers! BAD!
Let me give the positive thing first, before the thwapping commences.
The Evil Gnome is right: It's really painfully simple to harvest yeast. You've got everything you need in your kitchen already.
You need:
Several Mason jars or glass jam jars
A stainless-steel scoop or measuring cup
Sanitizer
After racking, use the sanitized scoop to scoop yeast out of the bucket into sanitized jars. Cover. Refrigerate.
Done.
The procedure is slightly different for carboys and conicals, respectively. But it's still easy, and lets you measure the appropriate amount of yeast to pitch.
Now for the thwapping.
Knocking out onto an old yeast cake is unbelievably lazy, just plain bad brewing practice. It will never cease to amaze me that the same brewers who will agonize over how much impact one ounce of grain will have on five gallons of beer will blithely ignore the impact of one of the four main beer ingredients. I can't believe otherwise responsible brewers still advocate such practices. You might as well just buy Cooper's kits and fortify them with dextrose.
In the first place, it's overpitching by massive amounts. Pitching yeast is not about cramming as much yeast as you can into a fermenter. It's about pitching the right volume of yeast to meet a variety of goals: Short lag-time, ester production, suppression of negative flavor precursors, etc. The only goal overpitching meets is reducing lag-time, and if you pitch the proper amount of yeast, lag-time still isn't an issue. Look up the effects of overpitching, and tell me if you want those effects in your beer. I don't. No respectable brewer does.
In the second place, you're putting fresh wort in a horrible, filthy vessel. It will also never cease to amaze me that brewers who will agonize over ingredients and other procedures will just dump their lovingly prepared wort into a disgusting wallow. It's all I can do not to ask, "If you're too lazy to take ten minutes to clean a freaking five-gallon fermenter, what other corners are you cutting?" Any brewer worth the name should default to this: If you can see a bit of soil on a piece of brewing equipment, it's not just that spot that's dirty - it's the whole damn piece. If there's a spot of soil on the outside of the fermenter, how do you know the inside is clean? You might have missed something. Clean it again. Now you're going to tell me it's perfectly acceptable to put fresh wort in something with rings of hardened krauesen and trub soil and other gunge? Nope. The sooner you realize that brewing is 80% janitorial and reconcile yourself to that fact, the better brewer you'll be.
It's unconscionable. It's terrible brewing practice. I wish I could meet the brewer who came up with this lazy, horrible shortcut and slap him in his face.
Grrrr...
Note: None of the above is intended to be personal. The vast majoity of brewers engage in this practice not knowing how awful it is. It's irresponsible to evangelize in favor of it, so I come down on it rather forcefully. Consider it an 'intervention'.
Bob
I really like the method you advocate: stainless measuring cup scoop full. How hard would it be for me to look up a proper pitch of slurry? Not very.
Ah, but that's apples and oranges. The breweries you're talking about are breweries that depend on non-Saccaromyces inoculation to impart that "house flavor". In that instance, you really can't change a thing, because you don't really know where the funk is coming from. Apple.Here was my thinking: everything in the bucket is already in contact with my beer, so it should not introduce anything un beer like into the next process. And I must have been lucky, because it was successful. It is kind of that Belgian theory of brewing: house flavor. Unless all those cats in the brewhouse next to the open vats were sanitized...
You may not have ended up with bad beer, but I submit that it was mediocre compared to using proper practices. One can make acceptable beer with mediocre and even downright bad practices, certainly. But I've always been under the impression that if a thing is worth doing at all, it's worth doing to the best of one's ability. Eschew mediocrity.On this last run, I have not experienced the last three.
To start, have a crack at http://www.mrmalty.com/pitching.php - it's a good overview of the proper technique.Do you have some better places to read about the overpitching? I would like to see what I can glean on that.
Good egg.But consider me cured! I will now advocate using a cup to harvest (read dip into the old yeast cake) the amount of slurry needed for the next batch, which will be in a newly sanitized vessel.
Cheeky monkey! [swings again]Unless I get lazy.
But I won't talk about that!
Cpt_Kirks said:My first try at this will be a dunkelweiss, an 8 gallon batch in a 6 gallon and 5 gallon better bottle. I want to pitch a batch of hefe on top of one, and wash and save the other cake.
You really don't need to wash it for quick turnaround. You lose ~25% viability for every 7 days you store the slurry. You can use the Mr Malty calculator to account for that loss. If you're brewing the day after harvesting, don't worry about washing the slurry; just calculate how much you need and pitch that amount.I read in another thread about doing a quick wash with distilled water to reuse yeast that or the next day. I will probably go with that method for one cake.
chefmike said:I also wanted to clarify: you are saying you harvest straight out of the cake without any washing process, correct? Cake to sanitized jar to refrigerator, done. right?
HOWEVER . . . if brewers are doing this and enjoying the beer they produce while saving a few bucks and some time - who cares?
I wish I could meet the brewer who came up with this lazy, horrible shortcut and slap him in his face.
Basically what I'm saying is I've heard 5 generations is the limit. I'd like to try going further to see if any weird mutations arise.
Somebody here linked this paper recently where an ale yeast was repitched 98 times and a lager yeast was repitched 135 times, both with no mutations. I don't think mutation is as much the concern to a homebrewer as contamination is.
Call it what you want but it is possible to select yeast (I don't like to call them mutants, just descendants.) You can easily select the flocculation by when and how you harvest the yeast. I agree, the biggest problem is contamination.
I don't wash. I just swirl the remaining beer in the fermenter and fill a quart jar. The most dense trub stays stuck to the bottom, the beer and the best yeast go in the jar.
How do I know if I over pitched?
I did a Hank's hefe weizen using Wyyeast 3068. After complete fermentation
on Oct. 25, I washed using the Washing Yeast Illustrated thread to obtain four separate pints of yeast. On the 14th of Nov. I took one of the pints and made a starter using 3/4 cup of DME and three cups of water to make a starter. The starter looked good so on the 15th, I started brewing and pitched the starter after brewing my second batch of Hank's. First thing this morning the fermenter is going crazy. I was extremely stoked until reading this thread about over pitching. I just looked at my batch and it is bubbling through a blowoff tube like CRAZY. Did I over pitch or am I worrying over nothing?
How do I know if I over pitched?
I did a Hank's hefe weizen using Wyyeast 3068. After complete fermentation
on Oct. 25, I washed using the Washing Yeast Illustrated thread to obtain four separate pints of yeast. On the 14th of Nov. I took one of the pints and made a starter using 3/4 cup of DME and three cups of water to make a starter. The starter looked good so on the 15th, I started brewing and pitched the starter after brewing my second batch of Hank's. First thing this morning the fermenter is going crazy. I was extremely stoked until reading this thread about over pitching. I just looked at my batch and it is bubbling through a blowoff tube like CRAZY. Did I over pitch or am I worrying over nothing?
Got to get the yeasties from the krausen, you can just keep re-using those.
So if I use a blow-off tube with the end in boiled, cooled H2O, I can use the yeast that settles from the blow-off? I've wondered about this, but haven't had the guts to try it.
So if I use a blow-off tube with the end in boiled, cooled H2O, I can use the yeast that settles from the blow-off? I've wondered about this, but haven't had the guts to try it.
If you used 16 oz (1 pint) of slurry in your starter I'd say yes that is more than what is ideal for a hefe. Mr. Malty calc is usually closer to 4 oz.
That said, I have been wondering the same thing regarding slurry starter's and estery beer styles. Let's say you used 4 oz slurry in the starter with well aerated wort, surely the yeast in the starter are creating esters as they multiply which end up in the beer, right?
I've been experimenting reusing Wyeast 3638 with hefes and dunkel weizens. First I tried pitching 4oz of (2 week old) slurry directly into 5 gallons of wort. Fermentation took 48 hours to ramp up but the esters in the final product were awesome. Next I used 2 oz of slurry in a 1 cup starter with 30g (1/4 cup) table sugar and 1/4 tsp yeast nutes. I let the starter work for 48 hours then pitched it into 5 gallons of wort. The fermentation was roaring in 12 hours. Hopefully I will get the esters with the starter method. I will let you know in 3-4 weeks when I crack a test beer.
You can re-use the yeast forever ot at least as long as your lifetime.
Bass did it for a long time.
Got to get the yeasties from the krausen, you can just keep re-using those.
Under pitch on Hefe/Dunkelweizens
You need:
Several Mason jars or glass jam jars
A stainless-steel scoop or measuring cup
Sanitizer
After racking, use the sanitized scoop to scoop yeast out of the bucket into sanitized jars. Cover. Refrigerate.
Done.
Damn, this thread left me with even more questions about harvesting yeast:
Which method to use?
To wash or not to wash?
If no wash how long will it truly keep?
These are more mindless ramblings than real questions. I'm sure tomorrow when I read some more the light will come on and I'll have achieved nirvana.
No, no no! [brandishes rolled-up newspaper]
<snip>
It's unconscionable. It's terrible brewing practice. I wish I could meet the brewer who came up with this lazy, horrible shortcut and slap him in his face.
Grrrr...
Note: None of the above is intended to be personal. The vast majoity of brewers engage in this practice not knowing how awful it is. It's irresponsible to evangelize in favor of it, so I come down on it rather forcefully. Consider it an 'intervention'.
Bob
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