Yeast Washing Illustrated

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It's super easy......all of the recent questions are answered in the first page of this thread.
If you wash the yeast, it stays in suspension longer than the trub, so when you swirl and wait the 20 minutes, the trub drops and the yeast is in suspension. So when you use the jars, the yeast will eventually settle and you will not have trub in there.
 
I don't really see any separation it just looks like a bunch of lard. I'd like to try this, just cant figure out what is going on here
 
I don't really see any separation it just looks like a bunch of lard. I'd like to try this, just cant figure out what is going on here

That sounds like proteins from the hot/ cold break. The yeast will be a thin, creamy off white layer. When you shake everything up, the yeast stay in suspension longer than the trub which is why you only let each step sit for 20 minutes. The yeast is in the liquid, the trub drops to the bottom, and you decant the yeasty liquid off the mess you want to leave behind. When you are done you will have a brownish, clear, very diluted beer liquid on top of a few cm of yeast at the bottom. When you go to reuse this yeast you pour off most of the liquid, leaving just enough to shake up and resuspend the yeast to pitch into a starter.

Hope that clears things up a little :mug:
 
That sounds like proteins from the hot/ cold break. The yeast will be a thin, creamy off white layer. When you shake everything up, the yeast stay in suspension longer than the trub which is why you only let each step sit for 20 minutes. The yeast is in the liquid, the trub drops to the bottom, and you decant the yeasty liquid off the mess you want to leave behind. When you are done you will have a brownish, clear, very diluted beer liquid on top of a few cm of yeast at the bottom. When you go to reuse this yeast you pour off most of the liquid, leaving just enough to shake up and resuspend the yeast to pitch into a starter.

Hope that clears things up a little :mug:
Thanks, that did help me figure out what was going on in the pictures. It sounds like a lot of time to get some yeast, but my next order the yeast is 7 dollars! I plan on making a starter to make 6 jars, and grow those, its probably easier than cleaning yeast, but I might try to clean yeast as well. Can't hurt to try, plus I've heard if you buy specialty beers that are bottle primed you can harvest the yeast that brewery used with a similar method.

edit - Are you siphoning from jar to jar, or are you pouring it?

double edit - sorry didn't realize decant meant gently pour
 
TANSTAAFB said:
When you are done you will have a brownish, clear, very diluted beer liquid on top of a few cm of yeast at the bottom.

Only one of my three washed strains is clear. The other two are cloudy. Is that just the type of yeast?

Also, not sure if this is the place, but I did harvest some yeast from bottles and after jarred it from the starter, the lids kept puffin up like it was still off-gassing. I've read that pressure can kill yeast so I rinsed(washed, saw a thread on wash vs rinse...) it. Does it matter?
 
I know it's probably been covered in this thread. But there is like 65 pages and I didn't see the question in the first 10. I want to re use my yeast in about 4 days. I get the washing part. The question I have is starter and pitching. 1. Since it's only 4 days can I pitch my yeast without using a starter. 2. If I need a starter how do I do that? I know a starter is wort, but how long do I let it sit and how much wort? After I pour out the liquid off the yeast can I put a little starter in there?

Ps I am making a IPA. OG of about 1.05
Thanks
 
You're *probably* okay to decant most of the liquid and pitch the yeast slurry after only a few days. I'd probably still make a starter, but that's just me.

To make a starter:
Use dry malt extract (the lightest you have on hand) to make a 1.030-1.040 wort. No hops necessary.
Easy to remember formula is 1 gram of DME for each 10 ml of water.
So if you want to make a 1 liter starter (1000 ml), you need a liter of water and 100 grams of DME.
Bring the water to a boil, take it off the heat, add the DME and a quarter tsp or so of yeast nutrient, stir, bring back to a boil and boil it for 10 minutes.
Cool it just like any beer wort, to pitching temp (I'd take it down to no higher than 75F, preferably 70F before pitching).
Sanitize your starter "fermenter"...I use a growler for my yeast starters.
Put the wort into the growler, pitch the yeast, put a piece of sanitized foil over the top (don't put a rubber band on it or anything).
Swirl it vigorously for a couple minutes, then put it somewhere between 70F-75F and let it ferment.
Pick it up and swirl it a bit every time you pass by or otherwise think about it. Every couple hours is optimal, but I never get around to it quite that often.

Optimally, pitch the whole thing into your batch of beer at high krauesen, usually about 18 hours from when you pitched the yeast into the starter.

If you want, and some people prefer it this way, let the starter ferment out completely, at least 24 hours if not 36 or 48, then pop it in the fridge at least overnight, then decant off most of the liquid, swirl up the slurry, then pitch it like any vial or smack pack of yeast.

More info here: http://www.mrmalty.com/pitching.php
and here: http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html
 
Thanks so much for the info in this thread.. I wouldn't have given it a shot without your help !!

I've got a question I've never seen asked yet :
Can you use bottled water or distilled water to wash the yeast with, then pour into a 1 gallon jar, sanitized with StarSan, then into smaller jars, also sanitized with Starsan ??


~Joey
 
joeybeer said:
Can you use bottled water or distilled water to wash the yeast with, then pour into a 1 gallon jar, sanitized with StarSan, then into smaller jars, also sanitized with Starsan ??

~Joey

Boiling removes oxygen from the water, which aids in yeast dormancy. And if you are going to be storing the yeast for longer periods of time, boiling also ensures a sterile home.
Also, not sure if it's in here- make sure your boiling pot is very clean, rinsed very well to remove any excess soap, and use cold tap water so not to introduce any mineral or deposit from your plumbing.
It's a fairly simply process. I find the hardest part is not getting any trub into the jars! Good luck
 
This is easily the best tutorial on washing yeast, but I thought I'd toss in my two cents, particularly regarding the myriad questions about the nuances...

I'm lazy and don't have a lot of jars, so typically I boil an old jar (peanut butter, seitan, whatever) for 20 minutes, and then let it cool to rt. I pour the water that I used to boil the jar into the fermenter and give it a good swirl. I wait another 20 minutes and then fill the jar with the slurry from the fermenter, put the lid on the jar (not tightly), label it, and chuck it in the fridge. I frequently get oodles of trub along with the yeast.

24-48 hours prior to brewing, I boil 2 L of water and 2 cups of DME for 20 minutes, cool it to rt. I uncap a jar, dump it right into the saucepan, and let it sit. When I'm ready to pitch, I dump the contents of the saucepan---trub and all--into the fermenter and I almost always see bubbling in the airlock before I go to bed that night. I haven't experienced any off flavors or stuck fermentations, and they always attenuate just fine.

So I guess the point is that even the lazy, half-assed method produces great beer, and I can't remember the last time I bought yeast.
 
I followed the directions in this thread and harvested some yeast lst October. Planning on brewing today so yesterday I made a starter using 1 cup dme and 2 cups of water. Cooled it to room temp and added a jar of harvested yeast to it. 5 hours later no activity at all. I then warmed up 2 more jars and added them to it. This morning no activity at all. Any ideas what I did wrong?
 
I followed the directions in this thread and harvested some yeast lst October. Planning on brewing today so yesterday I made a starter using 1 cup dme and 2 cups of water. Cooled it to room temp and added a jar of harvested yeast to it. 5 hours later no activity at all. I then warmed up 2 more jars and added them to it. This morning no activity at all. Any ideas what I did wrong?

Just some guesses here...

- Viability goes way down after that amount of time, so it may need a little longer to get going and show signs of activity.

- 1 cup of DME in 2 cups of water? Isn't that kinda high? By my (quite possibly off) calculations, that's about 5.8 oz of DME going into .13 gallon of water for a SG of 1.121.
 
Thanks to the OP for such a easy to follow guide on this topic.

I tried for the first time yesterday, but modified the process slightly by using the washed yeast immediately. Had listened to JZ talking about 'rinsing' vs 'washing' on his podcast so tried a hybrid of his method and one described in this thread.

Using Mr.Maltys piching calculator I needed ~100ml of yeast slury for my 1.040 beer. I used two small mason jars after letting them sit for about 20 minutes decanting half of the liquid on top and then swilling and duping the rest into the carboy.

My question is would you have just dumped the entire jar? Since it was only sitting for 20 minutes I may have dumped the healthy yeast in suspension and pitched the dead flocculant yeast into the carboy. Its only been 12 hrs since pitching but still no signs of fermentation and thought this would take off.

Also if the yeast sits in primary fermentation for 8 weeks is that too long to use for washing? What is the upper limit of time to wait to collect yeast after fermentation?

Sorry if this is in the thread somewhere already, not wanting to look through all 98 pages to find.
 
Thanks to the OP for such a easy to follow guide on this topic.

I tried for the first time yesterday, but modified the process slightly by using the washed yeast immediately. Had listened to JZ talking about 'rinsing' vs 'washing' on his podcast so tried a hybrid of his method and one described in this thread.

Using Mr.Maltys piching calculator I needed ~100ml of yeast slury for my 1.040 beer. I used two small mason jars after letting them sit for about 20 minutes decanting half of the liquid on top and then swilling and duping the rest into the carboy.

My question is would you have just dumped the entire jar? Since it was only sitting for 20 minutes I may have dumped the healthy yeast in suspension and pitched the dead flocculant yeast into the carboy. Its only been 12 hrs since pitching but still no signs of fermentation and thought this would take off.

Also if the yeast sits in primary fermentation for 8 weeks is that too long to use for washing? What is the upper limit of time to wait to collect yeast after fermentation?

Sorry if this is in the thread somewhere already, not wanting to look through all 98 pages to find.

When you wash/ rinse yeast, the stuff on the bottom of the jar after 20 minutes is trub...break material, dead yeast cells, hop particles, proteins, etc. The yeast are still in suspension. If you waited 20 minutes, decanted the liquid, and pitched the stuff on the bottom, then you dumped the yeast and pitched the trub!!! Sorry to break it to ya, but you may need to pitch more yeast! You probably got some cells in the remaining liquid you used to resuspend the stuff in the jar, but it will be a serious underpitch at the least.

On the other hand I just had a REALLY long lag time on a brew and was getting worried, so I cracked the lid and low and behold, krausen! Bubbles do not equal fermentation and the lack of bubbles does not mean no fermentation. I would not do anything until you hit 24-36 hrs and have checked for real signs of fermentation.
 
I followed these instructions today on only my second batch of beer. I used White Labs WLP001 for a Summer Honey Wheat. I already have another tube of WLP001 in the fridge for my next beer, a Pliny the Elder Double IPA clone. Being such a big, high-gravity beer, I may not wash that one. I only had two mason jars on-hand and a 1-gallon (very clean) Vlasic pickle jar. I followed the washing process and have two beautiful mason jars in the fridge right now and they look like they have plenty of viable yeast. I would say I have at least $14 in savings in the fridge now, but probably much more.

Thank you for the great thread!

Erik
 
I pulled a few jars of Pacman yeast from my last brew. The yeast jars sat at room temperature (approx 75f) for approximately 1 week.

The once clear top fluid turned hazy, and when opening the jar, gave off a sulfur smell. All three jars went cloudy and had a similar smell. Autolysis I believe.

I poured off the liquid, filled the jars with distilled water, decanted the slurries into a larger jar and refrigerated.

I am assuming the warm temperatures had something to do with the autolysis.

I continued to wash the milky substance off the trub, and while it still smells a bit, there appears to be a decent amount of yeast. This is based on the assumption that dead yeast drops and live yeast floats.

If you were me, would you toss this yeast?

Is it salvagable?
 
Here are three different strains i have washed. I used the same methods, including volume of water, on all of them but have pretty varied results after settling.

IMG_6577.jpg


I posted this picture in another thread and someone mentioned that my slurry is too thin and to use less water next time. Comments?
 
TacoGuthrie said:
Here are three different strains i have washed. I used the same methods, including volume of water, on all of them but have pretty varied results after settling.

I posted this picture in another thread and someone mentioned that my slurry is too thin and to use less water next time. Comments?

How much water are you putting in? Put in what you want to get out I am using half-pint jars and usually throw in 5 or so(5 cups). I expect to get out at least 5-6. After a few weeks I decant and combine them into 1 or 2 just because I have only 12 jars right now. But I generally get more yeast than what you have.

If you have an abundance of jars, and you're going to reuse quickly, I'd use 4-5 jars, and use each as a starter for your next batch. That way you cut down on the generations.
 
I have been putting in as much water as in the OP. A large mason jar (1L) and 4 smaller ones (250ml).

Sounds like next time I will heed your advice and 'put in what i want out'.

I think i'm going to decant and combine what i've got. that is another good idea.
 
I've ended up with anywhere between what you have in the darkest one and the one next to it. I brew a lot of 2.5 gallon batches so I pitch that amount into a starter (after decanting) and it's worked well. For a 5-gallon batch I'd either double up on them or step up a starter to build up more yeast, though.

I also didn't like having 10-12 jars taking up space in my fridge where my beer should be chilling so I started decanting the liquid off and pouring the yeast carefully back into a sanitized test tube like they came in.
 
I used this method with great results! But i have a question for you guys. The yeast i harvested came from an under pitched beer. The beer turned out ok, but i wonder if by under pitching that beer that would make the yeast any worse off. I am planning on making this same beer again soon and was going to just reuse this yeast after making a starter for it. Btw this was a lower grav beer at 1.053 which finished out at 1.008. Thanks in advance.
 
After pouring through pages upon pages of posts, I have a noob-ish question I did not see answered.

Are we harvesting this yeast from the primary fermentation vessel or the secondary fermentation vessel?

Thanks!
-DC
 
Harvest from the primary. If you harvest from the secondary, you'll be selecting for poorly-flocculating yeast (as it hadn't already flocced out in the primary).
 
What is the best method for combining jars?

Can i decant 2 and pour it into an jar with existing yeast? Or is it better to totally sanitize another jar, decant and combine into that one?
 
. Btw this was a lower grav beer at 1.053 which finished out at 1.008. Thanks in advance.

I might be missing something here, but 1.053 as an OG isn't actually what I would call "low-gravity" necessarily. A majourity of the beers I have made have been around that gravity (or even lower) with the exception of some strong stouts, and you should have an ABV of about 5.8%. That's not terrible. With no more info on what kind of beer it is or what the OG was "supposed" to be, it sounds like it might not actually have been low-grav. . .
 
It was a hoppy ale. I just wanted to say what the grav was for the yeast. It was a american ale yeast. It did attenuate well even though it was under pitched. At any rate i was wondering if it was a good yeast to harvest since i under pitched it. I am guessing its ok since the fermentation went so well.
 
Is it necessary to use a starter when re-pitching these? I've ready where people just let them warm up and pitch into the wort.
 
KCBigDog said:
Is it necessary to use a starter when re-pitching these? I've ready where people just let them warm up and pitch into the wort.

With a starter you know if the yeast is viable.
 
so i decided to "save" my yest cake from my wheat beer last night. first time i've ever done that and it was late and i didn't check here first. anyway, what i did was rack off the beer as normal which left a bit of wort in the bottom of the carboy. then i simply swirled the word until the entire yeast cake was mixed into a slurry and poured it into a sanitized (starsan) growler. i capped it and stuck it in the fridge figuring i'd wash it today.

that said, is it too late? did i already ruin the yeast? the cake was quite clean as it was a very lightly hopped beer and i didn't have a lot of break in there... so i don't think i had a lot of crap mixed in with the yeast. i certainly didn't do anything like advised here though.

thanks for the info!
 
so i decided to "save" my yest cake from my wheat beer last night. first time i've ever done that and it was late and i didn't check here first. anyway, what i did was rack off the beer as normal which left a bit of wort in the bottom of the carboy. then i simply swirled the word until the entire yeast cake was mixed into a slurry and poured it into a sanitized (starsan) growler. i capped it and stuck it in the fridge figuring i'd wash it today.

that said, is it too late? did i already ruin the yeast? the cake was quite clean as it was a very lightly hopped beer and i didn't have a lot of break in there... so i don't think i had a lot of crap mixed in with the yeast. i certainly didn't do anything like advised here though.

thanks for the info!
I don't see why you'd have any problems as long as you sanitized the jar and everything. I wouldn't keep it in there though. Decant off the beer and do your washing in the jar. You won't get as much this way but what you do get should be just fine.
 
sweet. thanks. just waiting for the yeast to settle back out so i can decant. then will wash in the jar.
 
I did not read over all of the replys, but here is my question. The krausen residue at the top of my fermenting bucket; should that be rinsed into the trub to be washed as well?
 
I washed my yeast from Wyeast 1056 a couple months ago. How do I know if my sanitation was adequate? I don't think tasting a starter would work because it will be oxidized. I'd hate to ruin a batch if my washing is contaminated.
 
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