Washing WLP007

Washed a yeast cake of WLP007 Dry English Ale but because the yeast flocc'd so much (clumpy yeast) washed it several times and kept the stuff on the bottom. I've pitched into a starter on a stir plate and my question is, is there anyways to separate some more of the trub out before pitching into the next batch?

Thanks in advance.

The amount of trub thats going to be left after multiple washing will be a small drop into a huge bucket (literally). It wont affect the taste of your beer.

had the same problem, seems like hard strain to wash in general

i saved a bunch of trub with the yeast and pitched it in a couple different beers with no noticeable off tastes - just much harder to estimate how much actual yeast you have

I seem to recall someone mentioning that the wait time for settling during washing using highly flocculent yeast was much shorter something like 5 minutes instead of the usual thirty.

Oh, ok. I try a shorter wait next time. Thanks for the help.

rockfish42 said:

I seem to recall someone mentioning that the wait time for settling during washing using highly flocculent yeast was much shorter something like 5 minutes instead of the usual thirty.

Click to expand...

Or < 30 seconds for something like WLP002.

-a.

I just washed this yeast this week from a Northern English Brown, and tried a new washing approach due to the high flocculation. Trying this new technique was also motivated by my not having a big enough jar on hand, and washing from a bucket primary.

First, I added a gallon of water to my primary bucket and swirled it up, as normal. After letting it settle a bit, I carefully poured the slurry through a sanitized funnel into a gallon jug, and covered it with sanitized foil. After about 10 minutes, this was the result:



You can see that even though the trub is still settling out, the yeast are already sinking away from the surface. I then took a sanitized turkey baster and carefully started to suck up the yeast layer, depositing it into a sanitized growler. I ended up with about a quart and a half of slurry, which I presume is nearly pure yeast. I'll admit that it's not the most sanitation-paranoid way to do it, but it seemed to work. I was left with a good inch and a quarter of very solid yeast in the growler.

I might have to try that. I ended up with probably 50% trub, 50% yeast. At least I hope it wasn't any worse than that.

In the photo above, is the "white" layer, the yeast ?
If so, why not decant as usual ?

This, among other reasons, is why I grow my yeast cleanly and divide instead of washing