lpdean40
Member
This thread was great and came in very handy. Haven't payed for yeast in about 2 years.
jeffjm said:Tonight I knew that I was going out after work, and also knew that I needed to keg my APA. I had every intention of reclaiming the 1056 goodness at the bottom of the carboy for a couple of bigger beers I'm doing this weekend. Since I was short on time tonight, I decided to boil my water, mason jars, etc. last night and let it cool for 24 hours.
After I got the kegging chores completed, I took the lid off of my stockpot that had the boiled and cooled water, jars, lids, and bands. The water was rust-red. Apparently I had a few rust spots somewhere, and they multiplied between last night and tonight.
So....by saving a few bucks by reusing lids and bands, I'm now going to spend $17 on more yeast, plus I'll use more starter wort than I would normally use for yeast that was harvested 36 hours before pitching.
Sigh....
I use half pint canning jars, they hold enough to make the next starter with, so that is perfect, and they stack pretty nicely, and are easy to label with some freezer tape.
dumb question here but if I use 8 ounce mason jars instead of 16 ounce ones do I need to add the yeast from two jars when I make my starter?
I use 8oz jars too and it's more than enough yeast
Made it through the first 45 pages of this thread but now have to ask the question before I finish up. Has anyone used the old White Labs tubes to keep the washed yeast in. I figured I could pour off almost all of the beer/wort/water mix and leave the trub, only moving the yeast to the tubes then top off with a little of the poured off beer/wort /water mix. Anyone have experiance or know of problems doing this???
Yes, you can. This is what I do. I found that having 12 mason jars in my fridge took up more space. So after going through the process as described I wait a few days and then decant most of the liquid out of the mason jars and pour the yeast into sanitized tubes, making sure there is enough yeast/liquid to leave no headroom.
While it *might* introduce some oxygen into the process, I can safely say that I just used 2 vials of 1-year old harvested yeast stored with this method and had no issues with it (used a starter of course).
How do I keep getting this? That yummy, creamy white layer is the yeast, right?
Maybe I missed this, but can you just sanitize the mason jars with Star San or Iodophor instead of going through the whole boiling process?
Boiling/pressure cooking takes the dissolved oxygen out of the water, helping the yeasties go to sleep. It also sanitizes the water and goes one step better than sanitizing with starsan or idophor.
bigbeergeek said:Exactly. What are you going to do, wash your yeast with starsan? You need sterile low-oxygan water in which to "can" the yeast, after all.
From what Gingerdawg was asking, yes you can sanitize your mason jars with StarSan. You still need boiled water for the washing part.
From what Gingerdawg was asking, yes you can sanitize your mason jars with StarSan. You still need boiled water for the washing part.
gingerdawg said:Cept Gingerdawg wasn't asking, he was answering...
bigbeergeek said:...and since you're boiling water to wash the yeast, you might as well sanitize your jars with it and save your starsan. Canning the water in the jars and cooling it overnight in the fridge makes too much sense to not do it.
I had some yeast in half gallon growlers, already washed, so I was just doing a transfer of two those two, then doing a third from a fermenter. I did end up bringing out the brew kettle to boil some jars, and rewashed the yeast since I went through all the effort. To me it seems easier to just boil a quart of water and then cool it for 10 min., swirl in the fermenter and toss into the "Iodophored" jars to reclaim one batch of yeast. YMMV....and since you're boiling water to wash the yeast, you might as well sanitize your jars with it and save your starsan. Canning the water in the jars and cooling it overnight in the fridge makes too much sense to not do it.
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