What is with my yeast???

My latest batch is the Holiday Ale kit from Williams, and I was ready to bottle my AHS Holiday ale at the same time. I got the White Labs yeast with the AHS kit and it really took off good (without a starter) and feremented well, and I figured it was about the same style of beer. So, I decided to bottle the AHS kit and remove some of the yeast cake to ferment the new Williams kit. So I siphon the AHS kit off and swirl the remaining yeast cake good - then siphon a fill 16 oz. Grolsh bottle of the trub and pour all of this into the fresh Williams kit wort, then shook the carboy good - thinking 16 oz would be plenty and should start fermenting quickly. BTW - the AHS kit sat in the primary for 3 weeks.

Well - 20 hours later and I don't even have a tiny bubble ring around the surface - I see no activity at all. I am not worrying, but trying to learn how much of the yeast cake to pitch into a new batch for the next time since this was my first attempt at re-using yeast. Any thoughts?

Are the gravities significantly different? The lag time is probably due to the yeast adjusting to a different wort composition and isn't necessarily a sign of any trouble.

Saccharomyces said:

Are the gravities significantly different? The lag time is probably due to the yeast adjusting to a different wort composition and isn't necessarily a sign of any trouble.

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The AHS gravity was 1.047 and this one is 1.058. Do you think 16 oz. of trub was too little?

I'd wait it out. I had a slow start on my second go-around using a smack-pack. Nothing really happened for about 36 hours or so and then it took off.

According to Jamil's pitching calc you have plenty of yeast, even if the slurry was thin and full of trub.

Mr Malty Pitching Rate Calculator

A 16oz bottle is 2 cups of volume which should be 300-400M cells. That is about a gallon yeast starter equivalent.

Now THAT is a good link!

Just checked the primary again and I am starting to see a creamy white ring around the edge and my first bubble out of the blow off tube... Shouldn't be long now before she blows!

Thanks all for walking me through this the first time. In the future, I think I will bump up the slurry to about 22 oz. or "maybe" attempt to wash the yeast.

Dan

DD2000GT said:

Now THAT is a good link!

Just checked the primary again and I am starting to see a creamy white ring around the edge and my first bubble out of the blow off tube... Shouldn't be long now before she blows!

Thanks all for walking me through this the first time. In the future, I think I will bump up the slurry to about 22 oz. or "maybe" attempt to wash the yeast.

Dan

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I did a yeast wash after bottling last weekend. Assuming it works, it wasn't very difficult at all - and I mean AT ALL:rockin: - and right now I've got three pint containers of 1056 in the fridge waiting to be warmed up and pitched - each with about a little over a quarter inch of what I'm HOPING is mostly healthy yeast at the bottom.

Washing properly is key. I did it the wrong way, and I ended up with autolysis beer on the fourth generation. Satan's anus has to taste better than that batch did.

Saccharomyces said:

Washing properly is key. I did it the wrong way, and I ended up with autolysis beer on the fourth generation. Satan's anus has to taste better than that batch did.

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Um. Define this "wrong way" of which you speak....if you don't mind.

I just pitched the cake into a jar without washing it. And from there into starter, into beer, back into jar. Repeat.


That was before I was a regular on HBT. Since then my beer rocks of course. :rockin:

Saccharomyces said:

I just pitched the cake into a jar without washing it. And from there into starter, into beer, back into jar. Repeat.


That was before I was a regular on HBT. Since then my beer rocks of course. :rockin:

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Well, duh.

Seriously, good to hear the WRONG method. I followed - more or less - the illustrated thread. Not exactly in that I didn't boil everything and then use that water. Instead, I used new containers zapped with starsan, dumped tap water in to mix things up, took out the suspension in another container zapped with starsan, then into the end holding containers from there. So long as starsan doesn't mess with the yeast, I think I oughtta be good. I hope.

Starsan is fine for sanitizing the jars as long as you don't keep re-washing and pitching the yeast over multiple successive generations. The yeast washing thread suggests boiling the jars so that they are completely sterile, since even a very small amount of contamination will grow exponentially with each generation you wash and re-use. I'm prefectly happy to get 4-5 uses out of one tube, at that point the liquid yeast is cheaper than dry.