Washed Yeast Sanitation

I washed my first batch of yeast a few days and I had to store it in salsa jars, because that was all I had available. The yeast in the jar looks fine, I don't see anything out of the ordinary in there.

I washed the salsa jars multiple times, boiled them and used star san on them. However, the lids still smell like salsa. Does this smell indicate a risk of contamination of the yeast?

I don't want to risk contaminating a whole batch of beer just to save a few bucks on yeast. Is there a way to tell if you are pitching contaminated yeast? Or am I being overly paranoid?

Thanks again guys!

Your yeast is most likely good to go.

To avoid ruining a batch of beer, make a starter. If it smells and tastes good it should make beer just fine.

OK I made a starter, but I dumped all of the liquid from my washed yeast jar in, trying to avoid pouring any sediment on the bottom... it was only after I did this that I realized a lot of that sediment was probably yeast.

I assume I screwed up and I should just drive down to the LHBS to get a packet of yeast.

If the jar was in the fridge, then the sediment on the bottom was pretty much ALL your yeast.

ChshreCat said:

If the jar was in the fridge, then the sediment on the bottom was pretty much ALL your yeast.

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Yep, that's what I thought! Doh!!

I tried to do as much research as I could before I attempted this for the first time, and of course I had to miss that one important tidbit... only to discover what I did wrong in the VERY NEXT thread I read after finishing!

Grrrr

Since my "starter" is nothing more than 2 cups of water, a little more than 1/2 cup of LME, and the liquid from my washed yeast jar (with probably very little yeast), can I throw that in my wort when I brew my batch so I have all of the LME required? Or should I just dump it because I have all that needless liquid in there from my yeast jar?

You COULD just dump the sediment into your fermenter, but the point of a starter is to get the yeast to reproduce and get active, so it wouldn't be ideal at all.

A good analogy that I read somewhere (probably here) was that your washed and dormant yeast is like a bunch of eighty year-olds, and there aren't that many of them. In an ideal starter they will reproduce and multiply to give you a lot of healthy yeast in their prime. Now which group do you want to build your beer?

As long as you think your sanitation was top notch, your wort is theoretically good to sit for quite some time, but the sooner you can get a healthy yeast population in there the better. If you do make a starter and pitch it inside of a couple days, you should be alright. Once the yeast start going to town on your wort they sort of 'push out' any other organisms that might want to make a home in your beer, and the alcohol helps to make a very unhealthy environment for most anything that isn't yeast.

I hope that helps!

If it were me, I'd cut my losses and start over. Are you hurting for that half-cup of LME for your recipe? Take a hydrometer reading of your useless starter - if it's 1.040 or so, toss it into the boil. If it's much lower, it won't add enough substance to make any difference. Of course, you'll still need to purchase a fresh package of yeast. The tiny amount left in that 'starter' will be killed off in the boil.

It's a live and learn hobby. You won't soon forget this one, and future batches (and starters!) will be that much better.

And - you can collect the yeast off this batch into that salsa jar - just pour the sludge off the bottom of the fermenter when done.

Octang said:

I washed my first batch of yeast a few days and I had to store it in salsa jars, because that was all I had available. The yeast in the jar looks fine, I don't see anything out of the ordinary in there.

I washed the salsa jars multiple times, boiled them and used star san on them. However, the lids still smell like salsa. Does this smell indicate a risk of contamination of the yeast?

I don't want to risk contaminating a whole batch of beer just to save a few bucks on yeast. Is there a way to tell if you are pitching contaminated yeast? Or am I being overly paranoid?

Thanks again guys!

Click to expand...

I use spaghetti jars all the time, and the lids NEVER loose their odor, I have soaked them in bleach, star san, oxiclean, nothing seems to rid them of their odor.

Having said that, my washed yeast stored in these jars always works great!