macleod319's yeast washing pics and questions

Alright, so I followed Bernie Brewer's directions and washed for the first time. I made an Ordinary Bitter w/ WLP006, trying to determine if it's my "house strain" or not yet. Basically a 6 gallon starter to get a good amount of yeast.

After racking off and adding just the 4 pints of water, this is what I have. I propped up the side to get the trub and yeast into thicker layers...



After letting it sit for 20 minutes, this is what I ended up with...



Here's where I got stupid. How am I supposed to get the yeast out of there? I tried pouring the whole thing off, but the trub layer just resuspended. So I just said screw it and dumped the whole thing into my starter flask, and let it settle while I did other stuff for a little bit to let my brain roll it around.

After letting the flask settle, I decided I would try a couple different things out. I would siphon off two samples, use my "sampling" turkey baster and suck one out, and just dump the rest and see what I came up with.

Flask at 0, and +30 minutes. I didn't quite estimate the amount of liquid right, and the last couple ounces went on my workbench. I really hope this wasn't the good stuff.



Here is the flask after siphoning, before the baster. I let this settle for a few minutes before sticking the baster in and getting the white layer...



After I "basted" one jar, I dumped the rest into the last one. And here they are after being in the fridge for a couple hours. From L to R: Siphoned jars 1 and 2; "Basted" jar, and the rest. What do you think?

You are getting way too much trub. You are either not letting it settle enough, being too violent with pouring out of the fermentor, or not using enough water for the amount you are trying to take.

From the pictures it is obvious you are not getting good, distinct layers. That says the most probably explanation is that you are screwing around with it too much instead of letting it sit and separate.

There was minimal trub in this batch, so let me try a different set of pictures here. These are from a few minutes ago, appx. 50 hours after washing. Now what do you think?






In the group pic, I am planning on keeping the first two, maybe the third (from L to R). I can handle dumping the last one, becuase I'm still getting a 2 (or 3) for one on my yeast, and possibly creating a house strain if I can get my other recipes in order.

If anyone wants all the pics for reference...

http://s482.photobucket.com/albums/rr188/macleod319/Yeast washing September 2012/

Man I don't know. I washed my first yeast a few weeks ago and had the same problems. Didn't help it was a kolsch yeast. I say screw it. As long as the starter gets going a little trub ain't gonna hurt it.