How to Harvest Yeast?

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate forum, but could anyone tell me what the appropriate method is for harvesting yeast from the yeast bed at the bottom of my fermentor? I want to transfer my beer to a secondary today and would like to try my hand at keeping some yeast alive, if only for practice. Would I have to do yeast washing, or do a yeast bank, or simply make a starter colony out of it and keep it going?

I've never done anything like this before but I think it'd be good practice and if it works, even better. Thanks!

If you search for "yeast washing" or "yeast harvesting", you'll find about 100 threads on it. Or here on our wiki: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Washing_yeast

Here’s what I do…in it’s simplest terms:

Get two large beverage jugs. I use empty apple juice jugs…washed and rinsed.

Fill one of the jugs about 2/3rds full of cool water. You can boil and cool if you like, I just use tap water.

Once you siphon your beer off of the yeast cake in the primary, pour the water onto the yeast cake and slosh it around real good. Then pour that whole slurry back into the jar, cap and give a moderate shake to mix it all up.

Loosen the cap a bit and set aside for 15 minutes.

Then gently pour all but the last ¼ inch of contents into the other jar. (That last ¼ inch of stuff is what you want to get rid of.)

Add enough water to the newly filled jar to get it back to about ¾ full…shake and set aside again for about 10 minutes.

Then repeat the transfer process and again…leave behind the last ¼ inch.

That’s all I do. Refrigerate the jar and once the yeast has settled to a nice compact layer, pour off the excess fluid and transfer the yeast to a beer bottle and cap.

Thanks, BierMuncher, that's exactly what I was hoping for!

in addition, here's another very simple write up with visual aids: http://www.donosborn.com/homebrew/yeast_washing_the_wyeast_way.htm

just be sanitary and patient...its pretty easy.