yeast harvesting from starter - is there a reason why not?

It seems to me that the easiest and most efficient way to harvest yeast is to make a starter that's slightly larger than what you'll need for the brew your crafting, and to decant 1/4 of it or so into a sterilized container (obviously, you'd need to either allow it to ferment out before doing this or cover the new container with foil until it's done doing it's thing). This would eliminate the need to 'wash' the yeast, and provide you with a clean, well fed supply to start up with next time.....

....is there some hole in my logic here? this seems vastly less complicated than washing yeast from your trub.

That's how I get the yeast for my yeast bank. Since each vial is around 10 ml I don't need to pull off much yeast to stock 4 or so vials. Then the rest goes into the beer I'm making.

I used to take each smack pack and make a big starter let it ferment out. Then decant and split the yeast up into 6 vials. When it came time to brew I would make a new starter. So I got six batches with fresh, clean yeast out of each pack.

Now I am a dry yeast guy, cheap and easy

Why do you need to let the yeast ferment out before sticking in the fridge for storage?

kcstrom said:

Why do you need to let the yeast ferment out before sticking in the fridge for storage?

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well, I would assume that it might need to finish pumping out Co2 before I clamp a lid down on it, unless I wan't exploding mason jars or vials.....I honestly hope someone can say this isn't the case, because it would be move convenient to just bottle it and go and not have to wait for it to finish, but if you can make bottle bombs, then I'm sure you can make starter bombs,too:cross:......