Anyone harvest yeast from Starter vs Primary??

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hbhudy

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I was trying to determine if there is a reason not to harvest yeast from a starter as compared to harvesting from a primary fermentor. Is one better over the other?
 
What do you mean by harvesting from your starter? Most of the time we pitch our entire starters in.

Are you referring to growing up yeast purely for the purpose of building up your "inventory" and not necessarily brewing right away?

I do it all the time, mostly bottle harvesting though. If I get an interesting beer, and suddenly decide to harvest the yeast but have no use for it now,I do exactly that.

Did it awhile ago with some maudite yeast.

You can obviously build up a huger starter than you need, and jar or slant the rest.
 
I've done both and the starter is usually pretty clean. When harvesting from the primary, I usually have to wash a couple of times versus once with the starter. Haven't really noticed any difference in fermentation or taste from one over the other. When I'm harvesting from a starter, it's usually because I had to buy yeast and want to build up a 1st generation bank.
 
Probably the wrong use of terms. I was thinking of simply making an extra large starter and saving off a pint to then use for my next starter,,, and on & on & on..

Does this help?
 
Well if you refigerate it it will go dormant, and if it's over a week, you'll need ot make a starter to wake it up again. But with starters viability isn't an issue, you can go a year at least.
 
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