BPhad
Well-Known Member
awarner322 said:
Sorry no experience with 007
It's worked great with 1056 so far, going to try to reuse sone Northwest Ale in a couple weeks. I'll report back on that.
Yeast Washing Illustrated
- Thread starter Bernie Brewer
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:
Sorry no experience with 007
It's worked great with 1056 so far, going to try to reuse sone Northwest Ale in a couple weeks. I'll report back on that.
OK guys, just finished bottling today and I forgot to boil my mason jars till after I racked. so I am letting them cool down in the fridge right now... if I can't do it till tomorrow morning is that ok???? ( re sealed the primary right after racking and put the airlock back on) or should I just dump my yeast cake.
BPhad
Well-Known Member
Yes that is fine
sweet, thanks for the quick reply
HollisBT
Well-Known Member
wormraper said:
Since I always have sanitizer on hand for bottling day, I simply use the sanitizer on the jars, lids, and bands. Lifting those jars out of boiling water and waiting for them to cool can be difficult and dangerous.
hicksjerry
Member
Is anyone else having a problem with the mason jar lids rusting after just one use? I boiled mine with the lid on the pot, left the lid on the pot and let them cool over night on the stove. I washed the yeast and stored it in the fridge. I had 2 jars and lids left in the pot for about 24 more hours (I was lazy and got sidetracked). The next morning the 2 lids in the pot of water had rust on them. I am just wondering if this will happen with my 2 jars of washed yeast in the fridge? Maybe it's time for plastic lids?
I've started doing 10 gallon all grain batches (I guess all grain doesn't matter), but I've been doing bigger starters to accomodate.
Should I just use a couple of the pint size jars to pitch into my starter or should I try to "catch" more yeast in a bigger jar?
At this point, I'm not trying to build a huge yeast bank, just trying to get a batch or two out of some of the more common yeasts I use.
I brewed a Centennial Blonde with Wyeast 1056 and since it's a really "neutral" beer, I'd like to use the cake to ferment a Bell's Two Hearted Ale. The cake is in my 6.5 gallon carboy and I can't just dump the new wort on top as I need to split it between two fermenters and I want to clean out the break material and trub.
This batch of Centennial Blonde is ready to be kegged...was going to do that tonight or tomorrow, and I want to brew the Two Hearted Ale in about two weeks.
I suppose I could wash the yeast and collect it in a one gallon jug and then split into quart mason jars.
Should I just use a couple of the pint size jars to pitch into my starter or should I try to "catch" more yeast in a bigger jar?
At this point, I'm not trying to build a huge yeast bank, just trying to get a batch or two out of some of the more common yeasts I use.
I brewed a Centennial Blonde with Wyeast 1056 and since it's a really "neutral" beer, I'd like to use the cake to ferment a Bell's Two Hearted Ale. The cake is in my 6.5 gallon carboy and I can't just dump the new wort on top as I need to split it between two fermenters and I want to clean out the break material and trub.
This batch of Centennial Blonde is ready to be kegged...was going to do that tonight or tomorrow, and I want to brew the Two Hearted Ale in about two weeks.
I suppose I could wash the yeast and collect it in a one gallon jug and then split into quart mason jars.
noblebrewer
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michaelsnayd
Member
Great information! How long do these keep?
People have reported using them after a year. If you're concerned about viability, pull one out, make a starter with it, and wash the starter. It's like starting the clock over again.
noblebrewer said:
I have the app and have used it in the past. I have 4 pint jars with very nice, thick layers on the bottom. Just not sure how many jars to pitch into a 1.5 - 1.8 liter starter to get the 220-230 ml of slurry the calculator says I need.
Or maybe I just don't need to worry about a starter at all. Since I'll be splitting the wort into two fermenters (about 5.5 gallons each, I could pitch the slurry from one pint jar into each fermenter. Or I could use two jars in that 1.5-1.8L starter on the stir plate and split that into the fermenters. I'm not worried about viability as I just collected this yesterday. I'd like to save at least one or two of these four jars as Wyeast 1056 seems to be popping up in a number of recipes I'm looking at lately.
When did you wash the yeast? Go to Mr. Malty and go to the slurry tab. Set your non-yeast percent to 10% (if your washed yeast look clean) and set your other slider to 3. Mr. Malty will tell you how many mL of slurry you need.
Next, estimate how much yeast you have in the jar. An easy way is to put another jar next to it, fill it up to an equivalent level with water and then measure the volume of water. If you have enough, straight pitch.
If not, Mr. Malty will tell you X) how many billion cells you need and Y) how many mL of yeast you need. From that you can calculate Z) your yeast cells/mL (X/Y) and how many yeast you have (Z x the volume of yeast). Take that number to yeastcalc.com and put it in the "Initial cell count" and figure out what size starter you need based on how many cells you have and your method of aerating the starter.
pabloj13 said:
Slurry was washed just over 24 hours ago. I'll check the volumes tomorrow and check out yeastcalc. That's the one part of MrMalty that isn't present - the size of the starter using volume of slurry to get to the desired pitching rate.
I bet you'll be able to direct pitch. I agree though. One simple calculation could merge those sites into one SUPER SITE. If yeastcalc added a slurry section, it would be fantastic.
michaelsnayd
Member
pabloj13 said:People have reported using them after a year. If you're concerned about viability, pull one out, make a starter with it, and wash the starter. It's like starting the clock over again.
That makes perfect sense, thanks! It's your own personal yeast lab.. definitely going to wash the yeast on the batch I have in primary now when it's ready.
jwalker1140
Well-Known Member
This is great information! One question though, what harvest dates to you enter on the mrmalty and yeastcalc websites? I assume you wouldn't enter the date you washed the yeast on mrmalty since washed yeast doesn't age as fast as harvested slurry. And I assume you would just leave the yeastcalc production date set to 'today' but I'm not positive. Thanks.
I do use the harvest date. All of this is an estimate anyway, and if anything you'll be slightly overestimating how much you need, which is better than the alternative.
Yeah for yeastcalc I leave it at 100% viability since we've already accounted for the viability with Mr. Malty.
well, I have 4 mason jars with washed 3068 sitting in my fridge that I did from my hefe batch 4 weeks ago. going to brew another hef this weekend. my question is... should I create a starter any longer in advance than a smack pack? like should I do it 2 days in advance to make sure it comes out of sleep being that the yeast has been in the fridge for 4 weeks or is 24 hours enough for it?
GulfCoastGirl
Well-Known Member
Last week I brewed a Belgian Wit and A Hefe both (5 gallon batches) from washed yeasts (WLP 400 & WLP300) and that yeast had been sitting in my fridge for 2 months.
I did a starter (on a stir plate) 24 hours ahead of brew time and the yeast did just fine and took off with no problems. I did take the yeast out of the fridge about 2 hours before I made the starter just to let it come up to room temp. I don't know if that matters or not.... it just seemed logical to me to do it that way.
I recently washed 3 batches of yeast and ended up with 10 mason jars with the bottom cm containing yeast. I know I should make a starter when using the washed yeast but in terms of determining the size of the starter how should I treat the viability of the washed yeast compared to liquid yeast I buy from the HBS?
Wil the washed yeast have a much lower viability and thus should I make a larger starter?
Wil the washed yeast have a much lower viability and thus should I make a larger starter?
The viability is dependent on when you harvested. You can use Mr Malty to tell you how many billion viable cells you have and then use yeastcalc.com to tell you what size starter(s) you need.
quick question. I have 4 mason jars of 3068 yeast. say I use 1 or 2 to make a new batch. now I have 2 leftover. should I just wash the yeast out of the newly finished batch and use THOSE for my next batches or use the washed yeast leftover from my FIRST washing??
I try to keep the older generations around for a while just to make sure the new ones are ok (i.e. not contaminated and washing went well) until my older generation starts to get a little bit up there in age.
So if I were you I'd use some of your newly washed yeast (assuming it's out of a decently low ABV, non-super hoppy beer) and see how that goes. Once your original stock starts to get old (4-6 months is what a lot of people do, though some have used past 1 year), I would use one of them to make a batch with a proper size starter. This way you can make your original vial last for MANY batches.
Anyone know what each of these layers might represent in my yeast starters from washed yeast? I tried making my own starter wort from grain and then canning it so one of these layers might be hot break pieces although I tried to keep that out of the starter.
Unfortunately, this was my effort at trying to step up the amount of yeast I harvested from my first batch of washed yeast 10 days ago. I was really hoping that the visible yeast layer would be thicker. I have never seen that much trub before in using washed yeast in a starter.
There's a lot of dead yeast in there too. What was the OG of your starter wort? It's still cloudy too, that layer will get thicker as more yeast crash out.
My starter wort has a SG of 1.040 but the problem is when I brewed and canned all of this wort I forgot to add some yeast nutrient to this batch. I had the starter on the stirplate for 24 hours and saw activity with a krausen. Chilled thw wort for 24 hours to help the yeast drop out and was expecting more yeast to show up. Guess that's just beer being beer at times.
I decided to pour off much of the remaining wort to get to the thin layer of yeast and trub. After adding the four contents together this is what I have now in 1 jar. I was expecting to find a thicker layer of yeast but didn't get that as a result. I am not sure why this washing is yielding a much lower yeast value than the other dozen or so I have done.
milldoggy
Well-Known Member
msa8967 said:
I used to have the same result until I added way more water to the carboy then I thought I needed. When you decant, only yeast is in suspension and you can gently pour this off, leaving that trub behind. I usually used a half gallon pickle jar and 6 pnt jar to get 4 or 5 pnts jars of rinsed yeast.
I should have mentioned that this was an effort to make starters out of my washed yeast that I thought had been healthy. I forgot to add any yeast nutrient in preparring the starter and thus ended with these jars. I did pour off the top half of this jar into 500 ml of starter with nutrient to see if anything forms using a stirplate.
hepcat
Well-Known Member
What a great thread! Thanks so much to Bernie for starting it. I am a fairly new home brewer and am definitely intrigued with washing yeast and using yeast starters. Having said that, I have only perused the first 20 or so pages of this 152 page thread and have a few questions which I'm not sure have been asked/answered yet so let me apologize in advance if they have but here they are:
I am currently using SafaleUS-05 dry yeast(rehydrated prior to pitching) for a brown ale I have fermenting right now and would like to know:
I did see a comment from bernie that if you are using a dry yeast he would not bother with a starter and would just rehydrate a new/fresh package of dry yeast.
But, since I know I'll have a really high OG, here are a couple of other questions:
I am currently using SafaleUS-05 dry yeast(rehydrated prior to pitching) for a brown ale I have fermenting right now and would like to know:
- Has anyone ever harvested and washed this particular yeast?
- And if you have, how did it work?
I did see a comment from bernie that if you are using a dry yeast he would not bother with a starter and would just rehydrate a new/fresh package of dry yeast.
But, since I know I'll have a really high OG, here are a couple of other questions:
- Would it be too much yeast to use a fresh pack of dry, rehydrated yeast and a starter made with the same yeast(harvested from the batch I'm fermenting now)
- Or, would it be better(definitely easier) to just pitch a pack of rehydrated yeast?
- Or, pitch two packs fresh dry, rehydrated yeast only (due to high OG)...and this is for a ~5 gallon batch btw.
People are saying for an initial pitching with dry yeast to not bother making a starter because it negates some of the benefits of using dry yeast. However, by all means harvest that S-05 now that it is already in a batch. It will harvest well and you can use the slurry just as in any other beer. You should have plenty of slurry for a high OG barley wine. Use Mr Malty to calculate how much slurry you need. No need to buy more yeast if you've already got some in your fermenter.
hepcat
Well-Known Member
Excellent thanks pabloj13.
MirImage
Well-Known Member
I just kegged a blonde ale and a cream ale. I screwed up washing the cream ale and only got two jars, but I don't think i'll be doing many more cream ales soon. Thanks for the Thread Bernie. Go Crew!
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