Yeast Washing Illustrated

Are you guys using half pint or pint jars and does it really matter? I don't want to have to store the bigger jars unless I had to (not that it's that much bigger, I suppose, but if I could take 8 half pint jars from 2 5 gallon batches rather than 4 1 pt jars from 1 batch...

janzik said:

Are you guys using half pint or pint jars and does it really matter? I don't want to have to store the bigger jars unless I had to (not that it's that much bigger, I suppose, but if I could take 8 half pint jars from 2 5 gallon batches rather than 4 1 pt jars from 1 batch...

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I've been using one quart jars and they're just too big, IMO. You'd be fine just using one pint jars or less. Also, when making your starter, don't be like me and use 2 quarts. It just makes it that much more difficult to separate the yeast from the beer.

The good news is, obviously, my washed yeast seemed to work, though they had been refridgerated for the 2 months they've been stored. Well, that and a culture made of three bottles. Seemed healthy enough to me. : D

I washed Wyeast 3638 about a month ago; made a starter on friday and pitched it yesterday. Within 12 hours it was bubbling like mad. They were in pint jars (4 from one batch).

I use pint jars. Last evening I began an experiment.

I had five jars of Phat Tyre yeast I washed about a month ago.

Using a stainless steel turkey baster, with an injection tip, I grabbed yeast from the bottom of three of the jars and squirted it into two of the others.

I wanted to consolidated my yeast efforts.

Of course, every time you mess with this stuff, you do take the chance of infecting it.

I've got 5 pints boiled and lidded. The directions say to toss in the fridge to cool. Shouldn't I wait until the jars cool down a bit?

janzik said:

I've got 5 pints boiled and lidded. The directions say to toss in the fridge to cool. Shouldn't I wait until the jars cool down a bit?

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I would, otherwise your frig is going to work harder. After I boil my water, I simply let it cool to room temperature before washing the yeast.

After washing, I set them in the frig.

I moved my stout over to my secondary and filled 5 1pt mason jars. I didn't have a big jar that I could do the intermediary step (I'm assuming it's to use as a filter rather than trying to work out of your carboy), so I just filled the 5 jars the best I could with my autosiphon. Some of them have a little bit of grit at the bottom, but for the most part they aren't bad. If I decide to actually use any of these, should I try and siphon again getting the batch away from the grit that has settled? I'm not sure if I'm really going to use these (I don't know if I'm going to make 5 batches that require an Irish ale yeast), but I figured I'd get the hang of it since I had the yeast.

Is there anyway to tell or test how good I did (other than lack of crap at the bottom of the mason jars)?

Thanks for this great write up Bernie! I had previously thought that anything to do with yeast washing/culturing/ etc was only done by crazy people in white lab coats . I got some serious bubblage going on in my Weihenstephan Apfelwein! Thanks again

I'm finally taking the time to do this RIGHT! I've never done it to spec before and I usually have trouble harvesting (mostly due to laziness or not having enough time). The junk is settling in the carboy now...thanks for the tutorial, Bernie!

Now that I've got 10 one pint mason jars in my fridge, can I just move them to smaller vials? I really only need the goodness from the bottom of the mason jars, right? Should I extract most of the top portion of the jar, re-suspend the yeast in the now halfway filled (or whatever) jar and then move it to a sterilized vial?

janzik said:

Now that I've got 10 one pint mason jars in my fridge, can I just move them to smaller vials? I really only need the goodness from the bottom of the mason jars, right? Should I extract most of the top portion of the jar, re-suspend the yeast in the now halfway filled (or whatever) jar and then move it to a sterilized vial?

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You may want to examine yeast freezing as an alternative.

Gammon N Beer said:

You may want to examine yeast freezing as an alternative.

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Doesn't the crystallization that occurs while freezing puncture the yeast cells? Is there a way to freeze/preserve them for longer periods of time without damaging them?

Hey Explosivebeer,

Check out this thread.....

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=35891

I'm gonna give it a shot soon.

Bobby1579 said:

Hey Explosivebeer,

Check out this thread.....

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=35891

I'm gonna give it a shot soon.

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Thanks for the link. I remember seeing that before but forgot about it. I'll give it a try sometime. Good luck with yours.

explosivebeer said:

Doesn't the crystallization that occurs while freezing puncture the yeast cells? Is there a way to freeze/preserve them for longer periods of time without damaging them?

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You can add Glycerin to the yeast to prevent that. I am not sure if it is 100% effective or not. Of course it is always wise to create a starter before pitching to see how the yeast are doing.

This is great information! Saving the $ is always a good thing!

I have read through this thread and cannot figure out how yeast washing is superior to siphoning yeast from the bottom of my primary into sterilized (boiled) beer bottles. A large part of my issue is that I cannot get my hands on any mason jars - I've hit 6/7 stores over the past month and had no luck.

Can anyone explain why I should not siphon yeast into sterilized beer bottles.

Thanks!

Cugel said:

I have read through this thread and cannot figure out how yeast washing is superior to siphoning yeast from the bottom of my primary into sterilized (boiled) beer bottles. A large part of my issue is that I cannot get my hands on any mason jars - I've hit 6/7 stores over the past month and had no luck.

Can anyone explain why I should not siphon yeast into sterilized beer bottles.

Thanks!

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There's no law saying you HAVE o use mason jars. If you want to use beer bottles, they'll work fine. Just boil them and some caps instead of the jars and lids.

Cugel said:

A large part of my issue is that I cannot get my hands on any mason jars - I've hit 6/7 stores over the past month and had no luck.


Thanks!

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Have you looked in any independant (not big box) hardware stores? FOr some reason ACE/ACO have them in their home aisles...And I've seen them at Krogers, IGA's, and even Meijer's grocery sections....

Bernie Brewer said:

There's no law saying you HAVE o use mason jars. If you want to use beer bottles, they'll work fine. Just boil them and some caps instead of the jars and lids.

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Thanks for your reply! Is using an autosiphon ok??? I worry that it won't work as I cannot sterilize it. On the other hand I can see myself boiling a pyrex measuring jar/thingie and then scooping yeast out of the primary after racking to a keg. Then pouring from the sterilized pyrex into sterilized bottles. Would this be ok?

Cugel said:

Thanks for your reply! Is using an autosiphon ok??? I worry that it won't work as I cannot sterilize it. On the other hand I can see myself boiling a pyrex measuring jar/thingie and then scooping yeast out of the primary after racking to a keg. Then pouring from the sterilized pyrex into sterilized bottles. Would this be ok?

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The idea of washing is to separate the yeast from the trub/hops/miscellaneous other gunk that is also on the bottom of the fermenter for long-term storage. If you just scoop the yeast out and toss it into the bottle you're not accomplishing that.

I did my first washing 2 weeks ago with the help of this thread . I made a starter just to see if I did it right. Man it took off the wort was swirling around on its own..Now i need to read up on freezing the yeast...

Thanks again

I've washed three types of yeast so far with this method. So far, so good.
Only Issue I'm having is Trub in the end result.
All my primarys are glass carboys, and not buckets. So when I pour my
sterilized water into the carboy, I really disturb the cake, and the yeast, and trub mix together. This happened on my Irish red ale, and a Brown clone, but not with my Cream ale. I'm assuming I let too much trub into the primary before pitching, but could I just get some yeast out of the secondary where the yeast it free of trub? I intend to use all of these to jump starters anyways, but wondered if the yeast in the secondary is stressed, or weakend somehow.
Any thoughts are appreciated....

Karb

I might be wrong here. But, the harvesting of the yeast probably grows exponentially. So. Let's say you harvest 4 jars for only 3 generations you could have something that looks like this.

The black dots represent batches and potential harvests. So if you were harvesting 5 jars for a maximum of 4 generations you could brew with that same 8 dollar bottle of yeast until you were at least 80 or 90 (625 batches anyways).

That diagram shows 85 batches.

question - I know when pitching on a yeast cake that you should always pitch the same or a darker beer so as not to impart flavors of a darker beer into the lighter beer. What about washing yeast? I assume since it's washed it will not retain any flavors/aromas of the previous batch so you can use it in anything you want next time. Is that correct?

earlytimes said:

question - I know when pitching on a yeast cake that you should always pitch the same or a darker beer so as not to impart flavors of a darker beer into the lighter beer. What about washing yeast? I assume since it's washed it will not retain any flavors/aromas of the previous batch so you can use it in anything you want next time. Is that correct?

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Right on!

10 characters........

I don't know if this was posted, but I don't feel like reading every post in here haha.

I use pellet hops for my beer, can I still wash my yeast? How do I go about seperating the hops from the yeast?

I'm also curious about hops in the washing process. Does anybody do this with yeast from a dry-hopped secondary?

The purpose of washing the yeast is to separate the yeast from the rest of the trub. Just follow the instructions.

First time washing yeast yesterday, as per the very detailed instructions, and I got to say that it's pretty frickin' awesome! Unfortunately, my next batch is going to be an Extra Stout, and I'm going to be using different yeast than I washed, so that yeast will just have to sit a while, but I'm real curious to see how well it'll do in a starter.

I washed my first yeast last night and everything seems to be going good so far. Many thanks to the author and other helpful comments in this thread. I used half pint jars, so I yeilded 8 of those instead of 4 pint jars. Is the full pint's worth of cleaned (top dumped off) yeast nessary for 5 gallons, or can i get away with just one of my half pint jars per batch? In the future, after i wash different kinds of yeast, I'll be playing around with mixing yeast strains and don't want to over pitch if i put in say two half pints of one and one half pint of the other.

That sounds interesting. I don't think most homebrewers need to worry about over pitching. Is mixing strains a common practice?

I've never done it but I don't think I'd say its common practice. Though I have read articles and have seen recipes using 2 different strains before; sometimes both strains at once and sometimes only one strain for the first half of fermentation and then adding the other later in the fermentation process. I think it would be nice to start experiment with stuff like that when I can step up to 10 gallon batches.

This is a great tutorial. I was only harvesting yeast before and not washing because I didn't really understand the process. I didn't really get how easy it was until I found this thread. I've already harvested/washed 3 strains and I bought a case of 8oz jars for when my LHBS gets me the Pacman I ordered.

I've only harvested 1 Yeast. I used 2 jars and for some reason my 2 year old pulled the other two out of the fridge and left them in the hot sun all day. I'll be washing WLP001 here in a couple days though. It is extremely easy. It's even better with a pressure cooker because you can make cans of starter wort. Then starters are a breeze. 2 minutes versus 20. perfect.

Hey that's a great idea! Do you just fill the jar with wort, close it and steralize in the pressure cooker? If so, can this be done without a pressure cooker?

Pretty much. You can even take some DME put it in the mason jar top it up with water. Then pressure cook it. I would imagine if you sanitize really well you could do it without one. But using one nearly eliminates chance of infection. The high temps achieved with the cooker will kill everything. Then the airtight seal ensures nothing will get in until you open the jar to pour in your yeast. That way you can bottle as much as your cooker can hold. Then have starters to last you months.

Thanks for this, Bernie. I just prepared my Mason jars and will be washing tonight.

One thing I learned that may be of use to someone else: if the jars are boiled standing up, they can develop air pockets under them. This means there is no water to absorb heat from the burner and your pot will burn.

I just scrubbed three brown spots off the bottom of my S/S pot. Bon Ami (or Barkeeper's Friend) works wonders on stainless.

-Joe

The question was raised about 100 posts back, and I didn't see an answer to it, so I'll ask in a different context....

On their site, White Labs recommends using washed yeast within 3 weeks of washing it. What is a realistic timeframe? Are they being uber-conservative? Or is it really only worth it 3 weeks out?

I ask because I had never read or planned around that part until just now... I've got my Edinburgh ale yeast in the fridge from Feb 08... and I just made a 1.5L starter of Cry Havoc to go straight into mason jars, but not planning on using them for at least a month... and then there's my Kolsch yeast that I don't want to have to keep rebuying....

Should I pretty much plan on making the jump to freezing yeast slants, if I want to keep going with these longer, looser time frames? Or is washing alone still a viable option?

(I plan to make a 1.5L starter for each of these when I get to pitching them in a batch of beer. Washing, in my case, is simply to avoid re-buying tubes of yeast that just sit around.)

A question was raised several pages back that I hoped would get answered. Once the yeast has settled in the pint jars, can it be drawn off into vials and stored in the fridge instead of the pint jars?

Chriso- page 2. ten months, but he has successfully used 12 month old yeast.
waterse- no reason why you cant. the important things seem to be sanitizing and boil the O2 out of the water that you wash and store in, which keeps them in a dormant state.