Yeast Washing Illustrated

I'm just washing yeast for the first time. This is a yeast that I recovered from Sculpin IPA that I have been using for quite some time now. I am used to making starters from a small amount of pure yeast I have frozen away but I have also done some freezing of yeast from large starters. After reading this thread I started wondering why I was buying malt extract to brew starters when I could just freeze away washed yeast from a brew. So here I am.

I washed two times with 20 min of settling and have ended up with two layers of sediment. It is clear to me that the smaller, whiter, grainier one on the bottom is trub and the larger, fine, off white one on the top is the yeast. I'm figuring the trub wont hurt me since I'm going to pour off the liquid, resuspend it in about 1 cup of 15% glycerol, break this up into half a dozen samples and freeze it away for future use (see the freezing yeast thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/d...why-not-farm-yeast-freeze-269488/index10.html). I still make a starter when I thaw them but just overnight like you would for a tube from White Labs.

I'll report back on my success, or lack thereof.

Well, I used tubes about the same size as a White Lab's vial of yeast. Got 16 of those out of the yeast from 6 gallons of beer. I checked the slurry out in the microscope and see primarily healthy looking yeast, a little bit of trub (irregular blobs), but no obvious living contaminants. Froze them all up. Man, that makes a lot more sense than growing up yeast in wort made from malt extract and freezing away. Thanks for the thread.

Great thread! I've got 5.5 gallons of an American IPA fermenting right now, about a week away from bottling, and I'm definitely planning to wash the yeast now.

A couple questions, I've tried searching the thread but couldn't find the answers:

1) Does anyone who washes / saves yeast like what's described here find they need to also make a starter? Seems like you're dumping about 5x's the amount of yeast as what you'd have in a White Labs vial, but maybe the starter is necessary to wake them up?

2) Has anyone put their washed yeast into a cleaned / sanitized White Labs vial instead of mason jars? I realize the volume is much lower, but if you're making a starter anyway it would seem like a good way to re-use leftover vials.

Thanks!

flanken said:

Great thread! I've got 5.5 gallons of an American IPA fermenting right now, about a week away from bottling, and I'm definitely planning to wash the yeast now.

A couple questions, I've tried searching the thread but couldn't find the answers:

1) Does anyone who washes / saves yeast like what's described here find they need to also make a starter? Seems like you're dumping about 5x's the amount of yeast as what you'd have in a White Labs vial, but maybe the starter is necessary to wake them up?

2) Has anyone put their washed yeast into a cleaned / sanitized White Labs vial instead of mason jars? I realize the volume is much lower, but if you're making a starter anyway it would seem like a good way to re-use leftover vials.

Thanks!

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1) Depends on when you plan on using it and the OG of the next batch. I just use MrMalty to tell me how much slurry I need. If I have enough: direct pitch. If I don't: starter.

2) I guess you could cold-crash it in the jar, decant most of the water and pour into a White Labs vial if space is a premium.

flanken said:

2) Has anyone put their washed yeast into a cleaned / sanitized White Labs vial instead of mason jars? I realize the volume is much lower, but if you're making a starter anyway it would seem like a good way to re-use leftover vials.

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Just let your yeast settle out overnight after the last wash and pour off most of the liquor. Then you will have a think slurry that when poured into your WL vial will have about the same number of cells as WL typically provides. With that, you can start an overnight starter into a couple liters of wort and have plenty for a 5 gallon batch of brew. You certainly can use Mr Malty or others for a more accurate estimate of volume but your vial will easily give you two liters or more of high density starter after overnight with shaking or stirring.

I've noticed that washed belgian witbier yeast takes a long time to settle down to the bottom of the container. I'm assuming that this is due to witbier yeast naturally staying suspended in beer, hence the name witbier or "white beer". Is this a correct assumption on my part?

I washed WLB001 California Ale yeast from an APA I brewed. I did it according to the thread and though I achieved pretty good results, I tried using one and it didn't seem to ever activate, so I tried another in a batch of beer bread, again nothing. I have 4 jars left and thinking they are bad, I take one, add to 1 cup of filtered water and feed white table sugar twice a day for 4-5 days, cold crash, decant and repackaged in 1/2 pint jar in the fridge. Looks like just under 1/2" of yeast in middle layer.

This weekend, I warmed up to room temp and started a starter with 1/4 cup DME and 3/4 cup water and boiled, cooled, added the yeast mixture decanted best I could and covered with loose sanitized foil. Action was very slow, but 12 hours later I notice results. I ended up pitching in ready wort after 30 hours.

All I can say is wow... 12 hours later I had to hook up a blow off tube to a bottle of sani solution and the activity is crazy. Still pouring out foam that has filled 1/2 gallon whiskey bottle in a 6 pack cooler... has about 2" in the cooler and bottle is almost full.

So did I overpitch, or is this how fast starters work? My 4th batch and none of the others were even close as the air lock was just fine.

BW210, Clearly what you did worked but I'm pretty confused by your description. In the first paragraph you seem to be saying that you incubated what I expect is yeast from nearly a gallon of beer in 1 cup of water with nothing but sugar in it for 4-5 days. That amount of yeast should devour the sugar in no time but have none of the other nutrients they need to grow well. In the second paragraph, it seems you started them for 12 hours in about a cup of DME which again provides enough sugar for a very short fermentation for that amount of yeast.

The goal of a starter is to get the yeast growing vigorously at high concentration. The amount of yeast you are harvesting should be able to grow up to a maximum density in 1-2 quarts of wort in 12 to 24 hours. You can either use that directly to start a brew or let it settle and pitch the concentrated cells. In that case I would expect a very quick start and a vigorous fermentation like you describe. It is possible but unlikely that you overpitched give the conditions you described but it is hard to know not knowing the starting gravity and volume of both the brew that you recovered yeast from and the one you are making.

All that said, sounds like you have a great fermentation going.

Brewitt said:

BW210, Clearly what you did worked but I'm pretty confused by your description. In the first paragraph you seem to be saying that you incubated what I expect is yeast from nearly a gallon of beer in 1 cup of water with nothing but sugar in it for 4-5 days. That amount of yeast should devour the sugar in no time but have none of the other nutrients they need to grow well. In the second paragraph, it seems you started them for 12 hours in about a cup of DME which again provides enough sugar for a very short fermentation for that amount of yeast.

The goal of a starter is to get the yeast growing vigorously at high concentration. The amount of yeast you are harvesting should be able to grow up to a maximum density in 1-2 quarts of wort in 12 to 24 hours. You can either use that directly to start a brew or let it settle and pitch the concentrated cells. In that case I would expect a very quick start and a vigorous fermentation like you describe. It is possible but unlikely that you overpitched give the conditions you described but it is hard to know not knowing the starting gravity and volume of both the brew that you recovered yeast from and the one you are making.

All that said, sounds like you have a great fermentation going.

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Ya... it sounds kinda confusing. I was trying to describe my process of testing the washed yeast to see if it was viable. I had two attempts to use my washed yeast ( 6 - 1/2 pint jars) and they both failed. So I put a third jar contents in a cup or water in a quart jar with sugar hoping the yeast would eat and multiply. They did and I could clearly see about 1/4" layer of yeast as before I wasn't sure if I saw any from the original wash. I then decanted, shook up the yeast and trudge and repacked back into 1/2 pint jar back in the fridge to wait until this past weekend which I pulled out and started a starter for my brew.

My brew was 5.5 gallon partial boil batch of 8# DME and 5 oz of hops. OG was suppose to be 1.071 and I hit 1.082. Still blowing foam out of the tube and overfilling a bottle in a cooler almost 60 hours later

Here is a question I have had difficulty finding the answer to, what is the density of the compacted yeast after it has been in the fridge for a while?

I have been doing a lot of reading and have found barely any information on this and what little I have found is horribly contradictory. I found someone (I think sacchromeyces) saying 1 billion per ml, I also found someone else saying the average in mrmalty (2.5 billion per ml) is appropriate. I also found someone saying that after 2 weeks it should be at a density of at least 4-4.5 billion per ml, and then I vaguely recall someone saying that when white labs yeast is compacted in the vial its 8 billion per ml.

I have just started washing yeast, and am preparing to create a starter. But I need to know how much yeast I am adding to the starter so I can figure out how big I need the starter to be. I don't want to just toss it in and pray, that seems very sketchy to me. What I would like to do is measure, with a ruler, the volume of "the white stuff" and then use a density to find the number of cells I am pitching (I can worry about viability afterwards, that's relatively easy).

I always just make the biggest starter that I can, which is about 1400ml in a 2000ml flask.

I chuckled at people who posted their pictures and asked these question. Well, guess who’s posting now…

Background – I think I do a decent job of getting clean wort into the fermenter. I do full boils, get down to pitching temps in 7-8 min. I drain through a strainer into the carboy.

After I racked yesterday, I thought it all looked pretty clean. So I went through step one and added a gallon of boiled and cooled water to the carboy (1/2 gallon mason plus 4 pint masons), shook well and let it sit 20 min. I then autosiphoned into the 1/2 gallon mason and dumped the rest. In fact, I felt I was dumping a lot of perfect yeast after the 1/2 gallon mason was filled. I let the 1/2 gallon mason sit 20 min. At that point I noticed it all looked the same, no separation so I let it sit another 10 min. It still looked to be settling in one solid layer. At this point I decided to let it sit overnight to be sure. The following is a picture after about 15 hours. I racked 2 beers yesterday, the left is S-04, the right is Notty. I sure believe I am looking at 750-800ml of solid yeast.

I would love your thoughts. Thanks.

I just washed some wlp004 for my first time washin'. I used Ball 4 oz Jelly jars though to help save on space in the refrigerator...they also have a little less of the "wtf is that in the frig" from the SWMBO.

sfrisby, You undoubtedly have a large amount of yeast throughout the material you have sedimented in your bottle. However, I think that the creamy material on the top of the bottle on the right in your picture is a bed of pure yeast on top of a mixture of trub and yeast. I don't think this in any problem at all, but I doubt it is all yeast. When I did this about half to two thirds of the material looked like that layer and when I looked at it in the microscope it had very little other than yeast. I got about 400 mls of packed material from a 6 gallon fermentation.

I presume the ability to separate yeast from trub really depends upon the extent to which the yeast is flocculated. As long as it is clean of other bugs (bacteria and wild yeast) you should be fine.

Any good trick to know
How many burps or secs between burps till I can move to co2?

IowaStateFan said:

The whole point of washing the yeast is to separate it from the trub. By mixing the trub with water, the yeast end up back in suspension and the heavier hop particles and other junk settle back to the bottom of the jar. If you carefully pour the liquid off the stuff that's settled, you'll have mostly yeast in the new jar. Wait for a few days and the yeast will fall out of suspension and the bottom of the jar will have a layer of yeast on it.

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I'm confused and I tried to search through all these pages on this thread to no avail so hopefully some experienced person won't mind helping me out. In the above statement you say that by mixing the trub with water the heavier hop particles and other junk settle back to the bottom of the jar. Then in the next sentence you say that if you pour the liquid off the stuff thats settled you'll have mostly yeast. That doesn't make sense. So when I see those pictures, I can clearly see stuff has settled but I don't know what the yeast is, the stuff that settled or the stuff on top. I think i saved mostly the stuff on top and now i'm worried that i threw all the yeast out and I'm saving junk!

It makes sense to me the heavy stuff that falls faster is the trub junk the stuff looser on top is the yeast.Your good.Pour most of the stuff from offthe top of the solid stuff or the cloudy liquid or when washing sometimes ill just pour the liquid if its soon and cloudy still avoiding the solid stuff that is settleing. If that makes sense to you.
Its kind of like your just trying to dilute it and capturing the thinner lighter stuff that falls slower or last(floating more in the top 2/3 of the jar) compared to the heavy trub that quickly settles. By allowing it to settle over a short period of time you then pour off the liquid and thin layer on top of the thicker heavier stuff into another container that fits or that you may have some water in.

You understand you are saving the liquid, not the particles that settled to the bottom. Right?

sfrisby said:

You understand you are saving the liquid, not the particles that settled to the bottom. Right?

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i guess but i don't understand why people are then saying the stuff on the bottom is the yeast???

CPFITNESS said:

i guess but i don't understand why people are then saying the stuff on the bottom is the yeast???

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Originally Posted by IowaStateFan View Post
The whole point of washing the yeast is to separate it from the trub. By mixing the trub with water, the yeast end up back in suspension and the heavier hop particles and other junk settle back to the bottom of the jar. If you carefully pour the liquid off the stuff that's settled, you'll have mostly yeast in the new jar. Wait for a few days and the yeast will fall out of suspension and the bottom of the jar will have a layer of yeast on it.

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I think you're getting confused with the statement "pour the liquid off." You're pouring the liquid (on top of the solid bottom layer) into a new jar. Discard the old jar. That's crap. The liquid in the new jar is the yeast. The phrase "pour off" does not mean to discard. It just means to transfer it to a new container--the container you will then keep in your fridge.

CPFITNESS said:

I'm confused and I tried to search through all these pages on this thread to no avail so hopefully some experienced person won't mind helping me out. In the above statement you say that by mixing the trub with water the heavier hop particles and other junk settle back to the bottom of the jar. Then in the next sentence you say that if you pour the liquid off the stuff thats settled you'll have mostly yeast. That doesn't make sense. So when I see those pictures, I can clearly see stuff has settled but I don't know what the yeast is, the stuff that settled or the stuff on top. I think i saved mostly the stuff on top and now i'm worried that i threw all the yeast out and I'm saving junk!

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You are confusing the layers during washing (keep the liquid, throw away the solid settled layer) with the layer left after putting the washed yeast in the fridge (the settled layer is the yeast). While you are washing the yeast stay in suspension longer than the trub and other junk, so when you shake it up and let it settle the trub sinks. You then decant the liquid containing yeast and water into a new container. When you put that in the fridge overnight the yeast will finally settle and you will see a creamy white layer that is your yeast.

thanks guys, makes more sense now. Trub settles right away, yeast stays suspended in the liquid. pour off that liquid and in another couple days stuff will begin to fall again but this time that will be mostly yeast.

CPFITNESS said:

thanks guys, makes more sense now. Trub settles right away, yeast stays suspended in the liquid. pour off that liquid and in another couple days stuff will begin to fall again but this time that will be mostly yeast.

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Yep and the second step is aided by cold temps in the fridge. Yeast crash out more easily in the cold.

I know there are a million of these type of posts. But I am currently washing some yeast and its been about 20 minutes and here is what I have. is what I want the almost beer like liquid on the top?

So I have a question about calculating how big a starter to make. I'm looking at the Mr. Malty Pitching Rate Calculator. I go to the repitched slurry tab, I assume.

Should I just use the default settings on the two sliders? That is, how do I know my yeast concentration and my non-yeast percentage?

I apologize if this question is already listed above, but I haven't the patience to read 139 pages of posts.

hercher said:

So I have a question about calculating how big a starter to make. I'm looking at the Mr. Malty Pitching Rate Calculator. I go to the repitched slurry tab, I assume.

Should I just use the default settings on the two sliders? That is, how do I know my yeast concentration and my non-yeast percentage?

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You only use the "repitch from slurry" tab if you are using washed yeast. But you also need to input your OG, gals, and harvest date of slurry. Once you do this, you will see the # of cells you need (in billions) and the quantity of thick yeast (in ml.) that you will have to build up to to have an adequate pitching amount. Since I generally use washed yeast, I'm only concerned with the milliliter amount. For instance a 5 gal. 1.060 batch using slurry harvested on Feb. 6, needs 208 bill. cells.
Since I only use the thick yeast that has settled in the bottom of my pint jars, I move the "yeast conc." tab all the way to the right. Notice that the ml. quantity goes down to 111 ml. This helps me because now I know exactly how much I need without any liquid. I don't worry about the bottom tab because when you move this back and forth, it only changes your yeast quantity a little bit. Since my samples are pretty clean, I just leave the tab in the center and use that number. Looking at my example here I have about 40-50 ml. of the yeast on the bottom. Since I basically need to double the amount I will do a 1200-1500 ml. starter and it will get me close. When I add the yeast to the starter, I dump all of the top liquid down the drain first.
This is my way of doing it but there can be many others. This just works for me. Hope it helps.

Perfect. I just washed some yeast for the first time this weekend, so I wanted to determine if I needed a starter at all, and if so, how big. Thanks.

I ran out of time yesterday due to craziness. The yeasties on the left were separated from the trub but the second one is trub/yeasties mixed. I have 2 of each. Should I mix it back up and try to get the trub out or leave as is?

In other words, 2 jars went as planned. I had to dump the rest into the other jars to deal with it another time.

Oh, right....





Pic 1

Pic 2

Great thread! Thanks to the OP. Just washed my first yeast.

Here is what came from my blow off tube and bottle after 3 days of very active fermentation. Stuff was quite nasty when I started, but I washed and decanted the contents twice with cooled boiled water which removed O2.

I'm assuming the yeast is still viable? The trub was just plain nasty and still is. Is there anyway to separate the yeast or should I just let it continue to sit in the frig and let the cake settle up some more.

I have washed after 3 weeks when racking twice before, just seems like a waste to dump all this yeast.

Given the coarseness of the grain trub, I would think you could resuspend that vigorously, let the trub settle again, and have pretty clean yeast. I love the look of Wolverinebrewer's washed yeast. Looks like 100% yeast. How and how many times was that washed?

looks better that what i have been using. i still make beer.
you have lots of yeasties.

brewon

This may have already been asked before but can I wash the yeast from my secondary?

The reason I am asking is, I just made an wheat beer and I would like to save the yeast for use later on. But I dumped the coriander and orange bitters into the primary. I will rack off that this weekend and probably end up with another yeast cake. Although small than the one in my primary, it will be clean and free of any foreign matter.

Any info would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Brewitt said:

I love the look of Wolverinebrewer's washed yeast. Looks like 100% yeast. How and how many times was that washed?

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Only once.
My process is easy and takes about 45 minutes including the 30 minute wait time for the trub to settle. Anyone can do this.
I learned how to wash from this thread but using this method I found that I was getting too much trub and small amounts of yeast. Also, I could never get it clean because of the wave action resulting from pouring from the jars. So now I do not pour from jars.
After bottling, I always want to fill 8 pint jars. In order to get the highest concentration of yeast suspended, I only boil and cool 140 ounces of water and add that to the fermenter with the yeast cake. I put the top on and shake until the cake is all broken up and in solution. The liquid will be greenish. Let it set 30 minutes. The heavier green trub will settle out and you should see only peanut butterish color liquid. Now you can siphon that off into your jars. Sanitize an auto siphon and put a 24" hose on the end. Either boil or sanitize your jars. Put the black tip of the siphon just under the liquid and pump on the siphon while keeping the outlet hose in one of the jars. This process is easier if you have a helper because its hard to hold the hose and operate the siphon but it can be done with one. Once the yeast is flowing, use one hand to slowly lower the siphon keeping it just under the surface. Use the other hand to move the hose from jar to jar. Once all 8 jars are filled the siphon should be just above the green trub. If done right, the tip of the siphon should not have disturbed the trub layer. Now, take a sanitized paper towel and wipe off the rims of the jars. Then dry off your still boiling lids and place on the jars and add the rings. After three days the yeast will settle completely and be nice and clean.
I do want to say that that pic. is either S-04 or US-05 because that is what I use most often. I can't comment on whether my method works for other yeast strains.

Wolverinebrewer: Sounds like very good advice. I have only done this once but it did seem to me that 20 min was too short and I ended up with something like BW210 but with about 50:50 yeast trub. That was in large part due to the fineness of my trub and pouring from the carboy. Next time I'm trying your approach. Thanks.

It will work for you.
Remember, time is your friend. Yeast will stay suspended for quite awhile so if you need to give the trub more time to settle, it shouldn't be a problem. Just don't rush and cut it too short.
And if you can do this without moving the fermenter and disturbing the trub, your jars will come out very clean.....as long as you don't suck any up.
One more thing. Determine how many jars you are using and only boil about 16 ounces of water more than you need to make sure you get a high concentration of yeast in each jar.

And sanitize well!

I had a go at this for the first time with my very first batch of beer w/Mr. Beer which was made with HME, DME & Safale US-05. Be kind, I'm trying to absorb a lot of info and I'm having a blast and trying to do a little bit of everything to learn techniques.

Anyway, I followed the OP's instructions and when it was all said & done,I ended up with 3 pint jars with about the same amount of yeast cake as pictured in the OP's jar on the right.

First question, what's the best way to measure the amount of yeast cake in ml's so I can get the numbers recommended by Mr. Malty for pitching?

If I have the numbers, should I still make a starter if I'm going to pitch a day or two after I wash the yeast?

Great info on this sticky.

Just did this today with the US-05 yeast from my Blue Moon Clone.
Hoping to make a starter and pitch into a cream ale next weekend.
Will pickup a packet of yeast , just in case....

I'm trying to wash my yeast but I wasn't too sure about what to do at the time so I just added some water to the trub swirled it and put it in a WhiteLabs yeast vial. Now half of what is in the vial is sediment/trub and liquid that is left just looks like discolored water. Is there enough yeast in there to make a starter? I have about 3 days before brewing so I can have the starter going for a while if I need to or do I just need to go out and buy more yeast? Pic attached: