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The cold hard truth about rinsing yeast with boiled water
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i'm pretty sure that breweries do it all kinds of ways, there is yeast and trub throughout the cone in various concentrations, but the point is there is no evidence that trub is harmful to beer. when i go down to drake's brewery for fresh yeast there is always a good bit of trub in the flask (2 or 5 liter flask) as far as hops affecting the yeast this is the very first time i've heard someone suggest that, could you provide more info on that?
just to be clear, i'm not saying that people should not wash yeast, what i'm questioning is it's usefulness, are you really avoiding anything that would harm your beer? i say no.
http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/category/science/yeast/
He's really the only guy out there doing experiments lately Ive seen. If you're interested in yeast, you really should follow him.
He's really the only guy out there doing experiments lately Ive seen. If you're interested in yeast, you really should follow him.
If you harvest from a fermenter the evidence says yes, you are doing something that may harm your yeast. Or, at least its not optimal.
You can't compare a brewery to home brewing. Not unless you know their entire process start to finish. Some crop top in open fermenters, Firestone walker uses a burton union. You can't just say"that's how the breweries do it" based on a visit to get yeast.
what evidence? to me the evidence it the beer i make and it's great? i would love a peek of the evidence you have, in all sincerity, i'm here to learn.
read this short thread from probrewer http://discussions.probrewer.com/showthread.php?35078-Nano-Brewery-Yeast-Harvesting-Storage
i'm not basing my views on a visit for yeast to a brewery.
i'm not basing my views on a visit for yeast to a brewery.
did you post your source for the hop thing?
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Yeah, expecting to find science based answers on HBT (except for Martin and AJ's incredible knowledge on water chemistry) isn't gonna happen. This forum, while great, is still too full of the "well I do [this] and it works great for me so don't worry about it" or "I think I read somewhere to do [this] so that's what you should do" posts that drown out the few that actually have done the experiments or read the peer reviewed literature that is out there.
I read most/all of Kai's stuff, but outside of slanting individual colonies, I don't believe he's posted about washing/storing yeast with boiled water, wort, beer, BMC, etc...
I'll take what kai says over a 3bbl nano brewery who uses dry yeast. It's not an argument.. Slow down, read the posts, follow the link, and have a discussion. Did that nano brewer give a speech at the NHC with any contemporary experiments or evidence? That seemed more like a home brewer turned nano brewer detailing how he does something.
you win.
I don't recall seeing that from him. But, his recent stuff deals with different maltsand hops. That one link basically shows why harvesting off a primary isn't optimal. I've pitched right onto yeast cakes, don't get me wrong... But look, i read scientific articles for work all the time. When i read stuff like that, i try to evolve my technique.
Can you elaborate why that your link to Kai's work shows what the OP is suggesting isn't optimum? The only thing I could see is the effect of 20°P (1.083) wort on yeast health, but lower gravity did not have an effect.
EarlyAmateurZymurgist
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Cryopreservation really doesn't become a viable long-term option until one has access to a freezer that is capable of sub -80C temperatures (cell activity really starts to slow down at -136C, making cryopreservation the way to store yeast long term). Performed correctly, cryopreservation and resuscitation is no less labor intensive than slanting, and the viability period is shorter than slanting when the cryopreserved cultures are stored at -20C.
One doesn't need a lot of storage space to maintain a decent sized bank of yeast cultures on slant. Here's my current yeast bank.
The cultures shown above are stored on malt agar in Corning 9825-20 20mm x 125mm screw-cap culture tubes. I could fit my old thirty-plus culture bank in the container shown above with a lot of room to spare when I used Corning 9825-16 16mm x 100mm screw-cap culture tubes.
Here's the beauty of investing time in learning how to plate and slant yeast.
Southern Tier's Culture
The well isolated colonies in the red rectangle were transferred to slants (each colony is composed entirely of the offspring of a single yeast cell). Unlike frozen cultures, which are usually mixtures of the pitching culture combined with low levels of house or yeast manufacturing plant microflora, the slants that were grown from the colonies shown above are 100% pure pure cultures that were kept pure via aseptic transfer.
Scottish and Newcastle's Tyneside Culture
Cultures that I isolated from brewery sources via single-cell isolation
The culture tube on which the letters "HAR" can be seen on the Parafilm contains Harpoon's pitching yeast.
Cultures that I obtained from culture collections
The photos shown above illustrate the true beauty of learning how to plate and slant yeast. It frees a brewer from the constraints of having to wait for a yeast manufacturer to bring new cultures to market. One can even plate entirely new cultures from wild sources if one so desires.
He says the best way to do it is to crop and repitch because that's how breweries do it. But not all. And they re pitch immediately. If you read the article from kai and from maltose falcons, well, they see it differently.
You have to scroll down and read about roasted Malts and hops. At least one of these is in that beer you crop off, maybe both.
Here's the other link. Read the last line of her summary in the first section. Also, she talks about long term storage and washing later down.
http://www.maltosefalcons.com/tech/yeast-propagation-and-maintenance-principles-and-practices
You have to scroll down and read about roasted Malts and hops. At least one of these is in that beer you crop off, maybe both.
Here's the other link. Read the last line of her summary in the first section. Also, she talks about long term storage and washing later down.
http://www.maltosefalcons.com/tech/yeast-propagation-and-maintenance-principles-and-practices
kako187
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EarlyAmateurZymurgist
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Ethanol is a net positive for the yeast culture in more than one way. The first and most obvious way is that ethanol is an antiseptic that is more harmful to wild microflora than it is to the culture. The second way is that ethanol is beneficial to a culture is that it is also a carbon source (a.k.a yeast food). We can cause a culture stored in a medium in which all of the glucose and all of the sugars that the culture can reduce to glucose have been consumed to consume ethanol by aerating it. The phenomenon is known as diauxic shift. The Crabtree effect does not come into play during diauxic shift because the glucose level is below the Crabtree threshold; therefore, the culture shifts into aerobic (a.k.a. respirative) consumption of ethanol as its food source. During respiration, a yeast cell converts a carbon source into water and carbon dioxide gas via the Krebs cycle. Ethanol can be thought of as inefficiently/partially digested yeast food. The molecular chemical formula for Ethanol is CH3CH2OH, which means that ethanol is a carbon-based compound.
Kai experiments are dealing with the growth of yeast in those enviroments, not just the storage so you can't make a direct comparison between the two cases. The Maltose Falcon was way to much info to quickly skim over - so I will not comment on that until I can read it properly
Lol... My wife was asking suspect questions about yeast one day too... Different yeast honey, don't worry!
The way he just posted is the best way to do it. That's how a lab does it. But, it's a whole other level than washing and splitting starters with nutes and only dme, which is above repitching off a fermenter..and that technique is really the lowest rung. Breweries make the same exact beer over and over. It's how these yeast strains became isolated to begin with. Repitching that same yeast onto the same beers, in the exact same conditions is different than just repitching any slurry, or storing said slurry.
I thought this post was about washing and re pitching, not slanting.
The way he just posted is the best way to do it. That's how a lab does it. But, it's a whole other level than washing and splitting starters with nutes and only dme, which is above repitching off a fermenter..and that technique is really the lowest rung. Breweries make the same exact beer over and over. It's how these yeast strains became isolated to begin with. Repitching that same yeast onto the same beers, in the exact same conditions is different than just repitching any slurry, or storing said slurry.
I thought this post was about washing and re pitching, not slanting.
Kai experiments are dealing with the growth of yeast in those enviroments, not just the storage so you can't make a direct comparison between the two cases. The Maltose Falcon was way to much info to quickly skim over - so I will not comment on that until I can read it properly
Isn't that your main concern in a starter? Healthy growth? Wouldn't repitching a starter with those elements hamper growth? Wouldn't washing with something help to eliminate them? That article is relevant.
EAZ? I thought diauxic shift was bad, and one reason to not store in alcohol. Is that not right?
But we are not talking about starters, etc. here. What is proposed is storing havested yeast in the green beer. If the alcohol/hops/grist make-up was so detrimental to the yeast's health then it would have never fermneted the orignal batch.
Basically EAZ has said instead of wasting time boiling water, etc. (which could potentially have contaminates in it anyway - not likely but potentially) an easier way is to use some of the green beer to suspend the yeast and then havest that.
Compared to the washing tutorial the differences are (in bold)
-Rack beer to bottling secondary/bucket/keg - leave 500ml of beer ontop of the yeast cake
-Do not add any additional water
-Swirl and let sit
-Decant into santised (washing tutorial assums mason jars to be sterilised during the boil) container
-Washing:Let container sit for 20 minutes, then decant again to smaller containers and store in fridge / Beer method:Store container in fridge vented
-Use within 2-4 weeks
You can then either take the yeast you have got and make a starter as you would with the washed yeast (decant & pitch into fresh starter wort) or if you retreive sufficent volume directly pitch into the fermenter
I think that was a tangent - I wouldn't expect someone to actually carryout what EAZ suggested could be done
What about the petite mutants caused by fermenting an entire batch of beer over a week? Beer who's main goal for the test was to grow 3-4 times, then make alcohol, and likely had no nitrogen added to it.
I'm talking about starters because I'm talking about harvesting off of them. I think you're missing that. I'm saying that is better than harvesting off of a fermenter and then giving reasons for it. I'm not saying it's better than slanting or plates.
I'm talking about starters because I'm talking about harvesting off of them. I think you're missing that. I'm saying that is better than harvesting off of a fermenter and then giving reasons for it. I'm not saying it's better than slanting or plates.
EarlyAmateurZymurgist
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I know Maribeth Raines and her former business parter Jeff Mellem. I consider Maribeth to be one of my mentors.
You are taking one sentence in a long paper and making it the center of your thesis. Maribeth states that trub can be removed using sterile (not boiled) or acidified water (true yeast washing), but follows that statement up by saying that she doesn't bother to do it.
Here's what Maribeth stated in the paper:
"Prior to pitching, the trub (cold break) can be removed by washing the yeast with sterile water or acid. I usually don't bother; instead I only resuspend the top two-thirds of the yeast for pitching and discard the remainder. "
The sentence that follows the sentence on which you are basing your thesis is the process that I have been preaching for reusing yeast since I joined this forum. This practice was common knowledge in the amateur brewing community at one time.
With that said, how long have you managed to keep a culture viable via rinsing and storing it under boiled tap water? I kept Brewtek CL-170 and CL-660 cultures alive for ten years on agar slants (I also kept a real Ringwood culture that I isolated alive for ten years). If you have done your homework, you will know that CL-170 and CL-660 were Maribeth's cultures. I would suspect that the Brewtek CL-50 culture that became Denny's Favorite 50 was also kept alive on slant long after Maribeth shuttered Brewtek.
EarlyAmateurZymurgist
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Diauxic shift is only bad if it occurs in one's finished beer. It's one of the reasons why we try to avoid aerating fermenting beer. The goal of culture maintenance and propagation is different in that the medium is a not an end product.
So, considering what you are doing.. With slants, etc is still a ways off for me. Is harvesting off starters to store for a month at least a better way than off a fermenter? Would adding more nutes at the end of the starter fermentation before storage be good?
Wasn't she Brewtek?
Also, i haven't kept any yeast very long. I use them up, and buy more if i need to. I have no rare yeast. As i said, I'm just getting ready to start keeping yeast longer, off of starters. Mainly, to keep this ECY21 as long as I can. I've read about glycol in the freeze. Do you think that's even wort it,.considering regular freeze temps?
I think havesting from a starter would be better than from a fermented batch - but that seems to be off topic from the original intent of this thread which was to say washing yeast with boiled water is not needed and could actually be detrimental.
And then things went completly of the tracks with agar and slanting and cyrogenics and Hans Solo... wait what????
Sorry, don't know any Drinkrow's? What are they exactly?
EarlyAmateurZymurgist
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No, this thread is about the fallacy that rinsing yeast with boiled tap water is more beneficial to a culture than leaving it in its own ecosystem. The slanting post was added as a viable long-term yeast management solution.
I brewed a 23 litre batch and kegged 19 litres off it last night... now I can't be bothered bottling the rest. can I just leave it in the fermenter in the fridge and call it a large yeast havesting container... If my wife asks me to get rid of it will you back me up... hahahaha just joking
EarlyAmateurZymurgist
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Nowhere in the text do the authors state that yeast should be rinsed with boiled water before repitching. The authors merely answered the question "How do I select the only the best yeast if harvesting the entire contents of the fermentor?" on page 168. I showed people who to crop only the best yeast from the fermentor without discarding the culture's ecosystem, which is more beneficial than it is harmful. Liquid culture management is about making trade-offs. It is easier to propagate a less viable culture than it is to clean up an infected culture.
While boiled wort is not sterile, it has a 5.2 pH, which helps to keep wild microflora at bay until the culture can lower the pH even further. Boiled tap water usually has pH 7.0 or higher. Replacing the green beer with boiled water raises the pH of the culture.
By the way, if you want to read a real brewing yeast textbook, pick up a copy of Brewing Yeast and Fermentation by Christopher Boulton and David Quain.
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Page 168 and 169 go into detail about rinsing with sterile water. Pretty sure they're referring to boiled water. Copyright is 2010. Any links to where they changed their stand on this?
I admire your conviction, but my layman take would be that even if boiled water is not sterile, it’s plenty sanitary for our purposes. That a slurry stored at 35 degrees may not be totally dormant, but it’s plenty dormant for our purposes. And that if any bugs do get past your process, they are more likely to feast on the unfermentable sugars in old beer than boiled water. But I’m a machinist, not a scientist.
Bottoms_Up
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Where can that tutorial be found?
Let me see if I have this correct:
- If I want to harvest yeast after fermentation and I'm going to use it to ferment another batch within 1 month, I can just grab some of the slurry from the fermentor and store it in a fridge before reusing it in another batch.
- If I want to harvest yeast after fermentation and I'm NOT going to use it to ferment another batch within 1 month (and I don't want to do agar slants and freezing), I can just grab some of the slurry from the fermentor, but every month, I should basically make a starter with it and feed it fresh wort to keep it viable.
Is that correct??
- If I want to harvest yeast after fermentation and I'm going to use it to ferment another batch within 1 month, I can just grab some of the slurry from the fermentor and store it in a fridge before reusing it in another batch.
- If I want to harvest yeast after fermentation and I'm NOT going to use it to ferment another batch within 1 month (and I don't want to do agar slants and freezing), I can just grab some of the slurry from the fermentor, but every month, I should basically make a starter with it and feed it fresh wort to keep it viable.
Is that correct??
Certainly you can infect beer with bugs like Lacto, Pedio, Brett, etc that will ferment sugars and compounds sacc won't. But, there are a lot of others that can live in water, or fall into your yeast as handling it, etc that could grow to make mold over time. Or grow and then get killed off by the fermentation and leave some off tastes
I do agree though that boiled water is good enough for how tight the quality control can be in a home brewing environment. I also think that regardless of whether it's under beer or water, you still have to use it in the same amount of time and just don't see the beer increasing it's decrease in viability. Certainly not enough to adjust a calculation for.
But, at the same time, I am inclined to look at my starters, leave an amount of beer in there to get an amount that will pour into the number of jars I want to use and shake and dump, rather than wash. Just because it's easier and for how long I'm storing them, he makes enough points to convince me.
Jamil is a programmer turned home brewing expert. Why do you think White wrote that book with him? Regardless, after dealing with all the screwed up recipe calculations and how they wrote those recipes in Brewing Classic Styles, and all the info out there that contradicts what they say on yeast.. well.. I doubt I'll be buying any more of Jamil's books. But, I do think he has a lot of authority on style and taste.
The next book I'll most likely be buying is Ray Daniels Designing Great Beers.
I do agree though that boiled water is good enough for how tight the quality control can be in a home brewing environment. I also think that regardless of whether it's under beer or water, you still have to use it in the same amount of time and just don't see the beer increasing it's decrease in viability. Certainly not enough to adjust a calculation for.
But, at the same time, I am inclined to look at my starters, leave an amount of beer in there to get an amount that will pour into the number of jars I want to use and shake and dump, rather than wash. Just because it's easier and for how long I'm storing them, he makes enough points to convince me.
Jamil is a programmer turned home brewing expert. Why do you think White wrote that book with him? Regardless, after dealing with all the screwed up recipe calculations and how they wrote those recipes in Brewing Classic Styles, and all the info out there that contradicts what they say on yeast.. well.. I doubt I'll be buying any more of Jamil's books. But, I do think he has a lot of authority on style and taste.
The next book I'll most likely be buying is Ray Daniels Designing Great Beers.
That's what I've gathered from a lot of sources. You could probably go more than a month. A lot of others have. Also, if you plan to store for a year, you can find a lot of info about using vegetabl glycol and storing them in a regular freezer. You don't need a deep freezer.
