Reusing Yeast Question

my method has been this: I bottle a batch, pour some sanitzed water onto the cake, swirl that up, then pour about half of the slurry into 2 sanitized jars. I then pitch that onto the new wort.
so made a batch of IPA, the yeast was reused s-04 yeast from a brown ale(the brown ale i used a new yeast packet). fermentation went off great. then i bottled the IPA yesterday. I poured about a liter of sanitized water into the carboy and did my process again. This brew is a 2 gallon test batch so i used a smaller jar and only pitched about 2/3's of it. no fermentation signs yet. its been about 20 hours. here is a pic of the leftover slurry, it smells like hops, im wondering if i didnt get much yeast out of the carboy since there was probably a ton of hop trub?

Have you ever tried yeast washing?

After I ferment a batch. I'll wash the yeast that's left behind to get all the hops and break material out of it. I portion the left over slurry into several small mason jars and use each one with a starter next time I need that particiular yeast strain. Your mtehod will work if pitching on the same type of beer and I wouldn't do it more than twice....

yes, i read up on yeast washing which sorta gave me this idea, i have been bottling and brewing in the same day so i figured this saves some time and is better than just pitching on the previous full yeast cake. can you wash yeast within an hour or 2 and pitch it on a new batch?
the new test batch is a pale ale with somewhat similar hops so its kind of the same style but not the exact same recipe.
so i guess my next question is, what part is the yeast?

hopbrad said:

my method has been this: I bottle a batch, pour some sanitzed water onto the cake, swirl that up, then pour about half of the slurry into 2 sanitized jars. I then pitch that onto the new wort.
so made a batch of IPA, the yeast was reused s-04 yeast from a brown ale(the brown ale i used a new yeast packet). fermentation went off great. then i bottled the IPA yesterday. I poured about a liter of sanitized water into the carboy and did my process again. This brew is a 2 gallon test batch so i used a smaller jar and only pitched about 2/3's of it. no fermentation signs yet. its been about 20 hours. here is a pic of the leftover slurry, it smells like hops, im wondering if i didnt get much yeast out of the carboy since there was probably a ton of hop trub.

Click to expand...

Look, I'm not trying to be a total di.., but could you break this into some background info and a question?

Punctuation might help. Paragraphs could help.

Love to assist, but I'm too old to follow. I get dizzy reading this.

I think it has something to do with yeast re-use, but I'm not totally certain.

Cheers!

sorry, my question was about my yeast harvesting process and fermentation.
It started fermenting tonight. my guess on the problem was it was too cold in my cooler.
I had two - 2 liter frozen soda bottles. so temp was probably around 50. i pulled it out, let it sit in room temp (75-80) all day and i started seeing activity this evening. I put it back in the cooler with 1 frozen bottle, which hopefully keeps it around 65ish.

hopbrad said:

sorry, my question was about my yeast harvesting process and fermentation.
It started fermenting tonight. my guess on the problem was it was too cold in my cooler.
I had two - 2 liter frozen soda bottles. so temp was probably around 50. i pulled it out, let it sit in room temp (75-80) all day and i started seeing activity this evening. I put it back in the cooler with 1 frozen bottle, which hopefully keeps it around 65ish.

Click to expand...

For future batches, you may want to find another way to slowly raise the temp. Going from 50 to 75 will help get the yeast going, but then cooling it off again might just cause it to stall. Others with more experience could probably provide a bit more insight on that though.

Also... you said the temp was probably around 50. Do you have a way to know what the temp. of your beer is fermenting at? A simple fermometer can just stick to the side of your fermentation vessel and at least give you a ballpark idea.

yea, i thought of that but it took about half the day for it to raise to room temp as it was somewhat cool out.
i plan on getting a few liquid crystal thermometers next trip to the states to stick on the side of my vessels.

on another note, i decided to wash the leftover yeast and i have 4 layers.
It's my 1st time doing so, from reading and watching videos they all say there should be 3 layers. here is a pic
is the yeast the 2nd layer from the top? im guessing the bottom 2 are layers of proteins and hops that seperated.

I recently did this:
I had a porter fermenting for over 3 months. I bottled it. I poured about 1/3 quart of boiled/cooled water from a sterile jar into the trub. I swirled and while it was still in suspension poured a full quart into the jar and popped it into the fridge. About a week later I brewed again. At the start of the brewday I got the jar out to warm to room temp. When the wort temp and the slurry temp were about the same (70-ish) I pitched the entire jar minus the clear "beer" off the top. I put a couple 1/2 gallon bottles of ice in a big pan that held the primary and left town for 4 days. When I returned a nice strong ferment was taking place at about 66*. This is by far the easiest method I've found. I have washed/stored/startered yeast before...this is way easier as long as you brew close to bottle day (which you do simultaneously...hard to imagine that fire drill and mess!)...

The one major drawback I can imagine others might point out is that this puts your yeast through a lot of generations quickly (each re-use is a generation I believe) where if you wash and save you get 4 or 5 batches from each generation. Which makes sense but I brew 15 gallon batches these days so I don't brew too frequently.

One last comment...I read on this forum where it was someone's opinion that if you pitch large quantities like this, aerating the wort has diminished importance...so I skipped my normal 5 minutes of rocking/swirling the primary on a tennis ball. (time 3 buckets is both tiring and time-consuming). Didn't seem to matter. But I haven't bottled/drank the beer yet!

nice, my thoughts on my method we basically do a half wash and pitch within a short time frame so i didnt have to make a starter. sounds somewhat similar to what you did. good to know you can keep it in the fridge for a few days with success. I think moving forward i will use that method and wash the other half so i can build up a yeast bank.