Brew day Yeast washing

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Prymal

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I know this topic has been beaten to death and I have read the sticky on yeast washing but I can't wrap my head around how to do it and pitch the correct cell count on brew day.

I have an IPA on us-05 that has been conditioning for 2 weeks I want to reuse that slurry for a dipa I brewing Saturday. I plan on kegging the IPA the morning I brew the Dipa.
Reading the sticky I would add some water to the year cake to loosen it up. How much water?
I let it settle out and pour the yeast into a container let it settle further then transfer again into smaller containers. I guess I just dont understand how much slurry to pitch if I just harvested it that day rather then using 2 or 3 month old washed yeast and getting a starter going. I know Mr Malty has a calc for pitching from slurry but I don't know where to position the 2 sliders to get an accurate volume to pitch.
Any help or suggestions would be awesome.
 
If you going to pitch same day I wouldn't bother to worry about it to much. Just wash before you brew so its in the fridge ready to recant when you want to pitch. The amount is an educated guess about how much trub you were able to remove from the slurry. Most of a good clean slurry that is thick, meaning little liquid left, being that recent should be about 90% yeast and 90% viable. IMHO
 
ok, so just wash the yeast once and try my best to get as little trub into the new wort as possible. So the beer i am making is supposed to be 1091 so just pitch 1 mason jar's worth of washed yeast?
 
Prymal said:
I know this topic has been beaten to death and I have read the sticky on yeast washing but I can't wrap my head around how to do it and pitch the correct cell count on brew day.

I have an IPA on us-05 that has been conditioning for 2 weeks I want to reuse that slurry for a dipa I brewing Saturday. I plan on kegging the IPA the morning I brew the Dipa.
Reading the sticky I would add some water to the year cake to loosen it up. How much water?
I let it settle out and pour the yeast into a container let it settle further then transfer again into smaller containers. I guess I just dont understand how much slurry to pitch if I just harvested it that day rather then using 2 or 3 month old washed yeast and getting a starter going. I know Mr Malty has a calc for pitching from slurry but I don't know where to position the 2 sliders to get an accurate volume to pitch.
Any help or suggestions would be awesome.
Click to expand...

If you cold crash the yeast you can get an idea for your numbers. If you have a nice clean harvest like this:

IMAG0180.jpg


You can estimate your cell count at around 3 billion per mL (assuming you decant off MOST of the liquid and only leave enough to swirl and resuspend the yeast) and you can set your non-yeast percentage to 10%. If you see that your harvest is dirtier (i.e. you can see a trub layer) you can just estimate what percentage of the slurry it is.
 
Until you do it yourself, it is a bit hard to understand the first time. Don't worry too much.
Boil about 1/2 gallon of water to sterilize it, let it cool. I also boil my glass in it the pot to sterilize.
Add this water -- the amount of water will depend on size of your jars-- to your primary, swirl around. Then put into large jar, swirl, decant etc until you get one nice clean yeast in the smaller glass.. the pic like Pablo's here in the thread is nice (although mine don't have beer-y brown liquid, mostly water/clear after a few go rounds).

Go on mr malty and calc how many ML or tablespoons of 90% viable yeast w the slider at 80-90% yeast. Eyeball and pitch that. With a DIPA id err on an overpitch.
Since yeast was an IPA you are trying to remove the hop trub from your dry hops.
good luck.
 
Thanks for the help guys I was just over thinking it. I get it now, I do think I am gonna wash the yeast the night before though so that i can get a good wash before pitching.
 
Prymal said:
Thanks for the help guys I was just over thinking it. I get it now, I do think I am gonna wash the yeast the night before though so that i can get a good wash before pitching.
Click to expand...

It's a good idea. Gives you the ability to estimate how much you have. I agree with you. For some reason the first attempt seems daunting, but it's really easy. The video at BillyBrew also does a nice job, in addition to the sticky in this page.

http://billybrew.com/yeast-washing
 

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