Help identify Yeast Layers-Washing

I am having trouble identifying the layers of the yeast in my mason jars. I read through the sticky on yeast washing-or rinsing-whichever term you prefer. After I racked off the cake I added about a quart of water and shook up my buckets. Instead of letting it settle and trying and then pour I just poured the entire solution into mason jars. I figured I could separate the yeast/trub/other crap out later when I had time.

I have two batches of yeast, WLP400 and WLP570. The 400 has been in the fridge for 3 weeks and the 570 only a day.

Here is the 400.







And the 570







I am struggling to identify the layers or what to do next with my jars. I also do not plan on using this yeast soon, so I think that means I need to freeze it-correct?

Thanks
Alex

i dont see much to decant. it looks creamy with not alot of trub. dont freeze it though. it will last a good six months in the fridge. if you freeze it without prior preperation you will kill alot of cells

Those look pretty decent. I usually trade off yeast volume for a bit cleaner yeast.

What I would do at this point is to pour off the beer at the top of those bottles - then re-fill with water. Shake it up then let it settle for 20-30 minutes - until you start to see the chunks settle to the bottom. Pour off the top of that into a new jar. Let that settle in the fridge for a week or so and you'll have about 1/4-1/2 the volume you have now - but nearly all yeast.

Sounds good. I will pour off and refill/decant and see where that gets me. As for long term storage, what is the preferred method? I will most likely get to the 400 within 6 months, but I really doubt I will use the 570 within 6 months. I am the only one drinking the homebrew in the house, so it takes me a bit to get through a batch. I usually keep 3 kegs in rotation plus one batch in my swing tops, and it takes a little over a month to kick a keg.

I need to read up more on long term storage of yeast. I cant bring myself to throw it away. Those vials are not cheap, especially from the lhbs I got them from.

Different people will tell you different things on holding yeast in the fridge. I've heard from people I respect everything from use within 2 weeks all the way up to 6 months.

Expect to have lower viability the longer you hold the stuff. 2 weeks and it'll fire right up and get going quickly - 6 months and your starters will be a bit sliggish.

I don't see much in the way of layering here. My guess is the slurry is all decent usable yeast. I keep jars just like those in my fridge, take them out on brew day and pour off the liquid on top. Then I fill them up with clean water....usually just some Bottled drinking water at room temp, mix them up, and pitch. My pitching yeast is in pint jars, with about 1 cup thick slurry. Top with same amount water and pitch whole jar in 5 gal batch.

Typically I get 4 pint jars off one cake so I only harvest the cakes from low stress clean fermentations...less than about 1.050 OG, less than 40 IBU, not dry hopped, and "good tasting" gravity sample at bottling.

What was your system for separating hops and trub on way into the fermentor? It really looks pretty clean, pretty much what I see.

brycelarson said:

Different people will tell you different things on holding yeast in the fridge. I've heard from people I respect everything from use within 2 weeks all the way up to 6 months.

Expect to have lower viability the longer you hold the stuff. 2 weeks and it'll fire right up and get going quickly - 6 months and your starters will be a bit sliggish.

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I agree with this. I heard an interview with Jamil and Chris White where the mentioned less than a month in the fridge and only freeze if you've done a slant. I can't expect much viability after a few months to 6 months in the fridge. You'd probably need to step it up and decant the active yeast off the pile of dead. Yuck.

In my experience you're selecting the less flocculent cells and tossing out 95% of the viable yeast by water washing.
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/12/yeast-washing-exposed.html
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2013/01/yeast-washing-revisited.html

That all looks like gorgeous yeast. Put it in the fridge and be done with it.
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2013/01/yeast-storage.html

Woodland comes correct.

Leave as is or separate into smaller jars if you have them. I've washed a few dozen batches of yeast and have had my best results with 1/2" to 3/4" thick slurry (with trub even, the trub doesn't seem to effect the yeast or beer) in the bottom of a pint mason jar with the watered down beer from the carboy on top.

I make starters from these and have had great results from this yeast up to 10 months in the fridge. They could go longer too I'm sure, I've just never tried.

eric19312 said:

What was your system for separating hops and trub on way into the fermentor? It really looks pretty clean, pretty much what I see.

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My process is incredibly simple. I use a sanitized paint strainer from lowes. I put the strainer inside the bucket, pick up my boil kettle and dump it in. Then I pull it out and rotate it back and forth to strain the liquid out

WoodlandBrew said:

In my experience you're selecting the less flocculent cells and tossing out 95% of the viable yeast by water washing.
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/12/yeast-washing-exposed.html
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2013/01/yeast-washing-revisited.html

That all looks like gorgeous yeast. Put it in the fridge and be done with it.
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2013/01/yeast-storage.html

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Those were the links I went off of when I decided just to pour the entire contents into the jars. I did not pour anything off from the fermenter. Just added a little water to the bucket, shook, and poured the entire contents into the jars. This was part of the reason I was suprised that the yeast looked so clean.

I am not familiar with the term "slant" I will have to look into that.

brycelarson said:

Those look pretty decent. I usually trade off yeast volume for a bit cleaner yeast.

What I would do at this point is to pour off the beer at the top of those bottles - then re-fill with water. Shake it up then let it settle for 20-30 minutes - until you start to see the chunks settle to the bottom. Pour off the top of that into a new jar. Let that settle in the fridge for a week or so and you'll have about 1/4-1/2 the volume you have now - but nearly all yeast.

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what is "cleaner yeast" doing for the beer? the bottom of every fermentor has lots of trub anyway, what's a little bit more compared to dumping out perfectly good yeast?

I have pulled year-old mason jars of yeast/trub/slurry out of my fridge, tossed them into a liter of water/100g of DME, set it on the stirplate for 2 days, and have had a very normal ferment from it, albeit after a slightly laggy start. I stopped trying to decant anything or wash the yeast at all. Woodlandbrew convinced me of the uselessness of that process.

eastoak said:

what is "cleaner yeast" doing for the beer? the bottom of every fermentor has lots of trub anyway, what's a little bit more compared to dumping out perfectly good yeast?

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Well, I spend a bunch of time determining what goes into my beers. I figure why dump a bunch of stuff I didn't design into the beer into my beer?

Also, it means I have a couple of small jars of yeast in my fridge instead of two quarts per collection. I always do a starter to calculated size to wake up my yeast before adding - so I end up pitching enough.

FourSeasonAngler said:

Woodland comes correct.

Leave as is or separate into smaller jars if you have them. I've washed a few dozen batches of yeast and have had my best results with 1/2" to 3/4" thick slurry (with trub even, the trub doesn't seem to effect the yeast or beer) in the bottom of a pint mason jar with the watered down beer from the carboy on top.

I make starters from these and have had great results from this yeast up to 10 months in the fridge. They could go longer too I'm sure, I've just never tried.

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Following Woodland's yeast washing exposed blog it seems like you should get rid of the liquid on top and replace with clean water. Here was the paragraph...


"What was interesting was that the bacteriological content was much higher in the top portion of the yeast containers than in the lower parts. There was about 100 times more bacteria per live yeast cell in the top "liquid" section."

So I do dump the liquid portion twice in my process, first 24 hours after collecting into quart jars, and again before either direct pitching (if used within 30 days) or into a starter if older. Each time I dump the water I add fresh water and resuspend the yeast into solution to make it easy to pour, and providing the water component for the next decant.

eric19312 said:

Following Woodland's yeast washing exposed blog it seems like you should get rid of the liquid on top and replace with clean water. Here was the paragraph...


"What was interesting was that the bacteriological content was much higher in the top portion of the yeast containers than in the lower parts. There was about 100 times more bacteria per live yeast cell in the top "liquid" section."

So I do dump the liquid portion twice in my process, first 24 hours after collecting into quart jars, and again before either direct pitching (if used within 30 days) or into a starter if older. Each time I dump the water I add fresh water and resuspend the yeast into solution to make it easy to pour, and providing the water component for the next decant.

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Good to know! Thanks.

The yeast I have been using stops just short of dropping with a "clunk". If I waited 20 minutes and discarded what dropped all I would have is water/beer.

LBussy said:

The yeast I have been using stops just short of dropping with a "clunk". If I waited 20 minutes and discarded what dropped all I would have is water/beer.

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sure, obviously you would do it earlier then.

brycelarson said:

sure, obviously you would do it earlier then.

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The point is, there is no value/sense to trying to stratify the yeast and trub. I have certainly seen some yeasts that will stratify, but there's more than a little anecdotal evidence that points to little benefit and some potential harm from taking the "lighter" layers.

While the OCD part of me can appreciate you wanting to know exactly what is in your beers, in a practical sense you still don't know because all of the layers contain trub.

Have you 'scoped the layers you get?

LBussy said:

Have you 'scoped the layers you get?

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Nope, just eyeballed. I put plenty of hot and cold break along with hop crud into my primary and I don't secondary - so the stuff I get dumped right out of the fermenter is pretty brown/green-ish.

Each time I was the resulting yeast cake is lighter and smoother in texture. Two washings and it's the same color as the yeast coming out of a liquid yeast pack.

How do you know "lighter and smoother" is better though?

Not trying to be argumentative but I guess I am making a point. The color of the trub you most certainly have has no bearing on the viability and purity.

I don't add water, to save yeast. Just save the goodie part in pint jars as recently suggested to me by another member and worked better than other methods I've tried to save yeast. Decant(pour slowly) the liquid off the top, decant the layer between the arrows I added to your pic into sanitized pint jars, if that's a dark layer at the bottom, leave it behind. So you then have pints full of yeast, repeat one more time as it settles again. Then store.

LBussy said:

Not trying to be argumentative but I guess I am making a point. The color of the trub you most certainly have has no bearing on the viability and purity.

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I dunno - the stuff you buy is light colored and doesn't have chunks. I know that hops are green - so the green chunks in collected yeast certainly are a measure of purity. Viability - sure, I get that.

brycelarson said:

I dunno - the stuff you buy is light colored and doesn't have chunks. I know that hops are green - so the green chunks in collected yeast certainly are a measure of purity. Viability - sure, I get that.

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Color can be a great indication of purity, but viability? Impure yeast will still make beer, quite viable indeed.

LBussy said:

Not trying to be argumentative but I guess I am making a point. The color of the trub you most certainly have has no bearing on the viability and purity.

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BobbiLynn said:

Color can be a great indication of purity, but viability? Impure yeast will still make beer, quite viable indeed.

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My point is simply that for little to no cost, little effort and no loss of viability I can control my ingredients. I think that's of value.

I'm certain that it's not necessary for successful beers - but I don't really want to dump an ounce of used hop junk into a new batch of wort if I can avoid it - and it's easy to avoid by washing my yeast.

brycelarson said:

I can control my ingredients. I think that's of value.

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After 4 years of following recipe kits to the T, then about 4 or 5 months of "winging it", a happy medium is in order. The more you can control ingredients, the more you can learn from the changes you have made.

BobbiLynn said:

After 4 years of following recipe kits to the T, then about 4 or 5 months of "winging it", a happy medium is in order. The more you can control ingredients, the more you can learn from the changes you have made.

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Exactly. And as a moderate but not expert brewer I'm very much in the testing and learning phase of my brewing. I feel like I need to really lock down as many variables as I can at this point - so that I can develop the knowledge in order to be more creative later while still making successful beers.

I recycle yeast because I like the process - but my goal is to have as close a product to a new packet as possible. That means removing as much beer and trub as I can.

The only time I've washed yeast(yes, just once) I sat the jars in the fridge for 30 minutes or so and could see the layers rather well. Poured off the top, poured the middle in a pint jar, and discarded the bottom. Did that with all three jars and had a great fermentation a week later on a bigger beer.

Water washed yeast is just as viable as yeast that is not washed. The rinse and decant method is very poor at separating viable from non viable. It does make the yeast look prettier, but that's about it. You are putting 95% of your viable yeast down the drain and selecting yeast with poor adhesion. This will lead to yeast that is powdery and does not clear well.

Nice picture BobbiLynn. That's the way to do it.