Underpitched - is the yeast too stressed to wash & reuse?

Hello fellow brewers! A newbie here, with 1 successfull batch under his my belt. I've learned a lot from HBT and is very grateful for HBT's existence and I learn more about home brewing every day But now I have a quick yeast question. (Well, it turned out to be a pretty detailed question, but I hope that's just a good thing.) I've tried searching the forums, but haven't been able to find anything about this particular issue.

I brewed a christmas/winter ale (based on a Muntons pre-hopped LME kit) 3 weeks ago. OG was 1.063, after 2 weeks it was down to 1.030, not ideal, but not horrible either I guess, and I guess underpitching is the reason (read on for details). Another week have gone by, airlock has bubbled a little, but I haven't checked the gravity since. It could be further down by now. I plan on bottling tomorrow if it seems right.

Anyhow, let's get to the core of the issue:

I pitched a smacked & swollen smack pack of Wyeast 1450 Danny's Fave, and I wrongly believed a starter wasn't necessary with liquid yeast (it was my first time using liquid yeast) - only later did I read up and learn I should have made a starter! So I guess I underpitched :/ But fermentation started as it should after about 12 hours if I remember correctly, built a great krausen and was quite vigorous and vital for many days thereafter.

My plan was from the beginning to wash and reuse this yeast when the batch was done, since it's supposed to be a quite good and versatile yeast, and it was a bit expensive, + I'd like to learn how to wash yeast.

But after I learned that I'd underpitched I became worried that the yeast might be too stressed out to do more work later on? Or will washing it (and making starters for later batches) revitalize it? Should I even be worried? Toss it or wash it? Any other concerns, tips and/or tricks in this situation?

Another factor which might have had any impact is this: temperature. In the beginning I kept the temperature quite stable at 17-18 C. But after about a week winter suddenly hit us unusually hard here in Norway and temperatures outside dropped to -15 C (5 F) at the most, and since I live in a poorly isolated old house, temperature inside dropped to 13-14 C (57 F) at the worst at night and when I was at work. When I'm home I can relatively quickly get it up to 18-20 C, so in average the temperature has been around 17 C (62 F). Could this have stressed/done anything bad to the yeast?

Thanks a lot in advance for any answers!

The high FG could be due to the temperature swings.

I personally will harvest yeast even if it's been underpitched. I figure it's built up a big colony and should be fine. Especially if you were to make a starter for the next batch that's going to use the washed yeast.

You can reuse the yeast, but they will not be optimal. Don't ever forget they're a living organism, and if you deprive them of nutrients or treat them badly, they will not be as effective the next time.

Due to underpitching and temperature swings your yeast have decided that it's better for their survival to go to sleep rather than consume the food you provided for them. Is this a description of the yeast you want to ferment your next batch?

Don't get too stressed though, brewing is a learning experience and each time you pick something up. Use dry yeast while you're still learning, though... your wallet will thank you.

Thanks for enlightening and sense-making answers! I'll go work on my temperature control skills and take a yeast parenting class!

I haven't really tried reusing my yeast. Except for a few times I have ajways been very happy with the WYEAST packs. Couple tips smack them and keep them in room temp (for ale strains) for 2 hours then pitch. I also shake them every so often. I buy mine for around $5 which for a quality ready to pitch yeast is not bad. I would suggest if it was mostly a money reason that you should try to find other ways of cutting costs and pitch the whole yeast. They are designed to innoculate 5 gallons and it doesn't feel right shortchanging the beer you worked so hard for.
Also remember if you are just starting that every fermentation process will be a little different. This used to drive me crazy since I wanted consistency in when it started and finished. I was too preoccupied worrying about the drinking date. It really depends on the amount of sugars from which malts, the temp pitched, initial activation of yeast ect. (alot of variables). This is why I would always recommend pitching the whole yeast so you can certainly at least control that variable.
Without doubt though your'e temp. swings will greatly affect the "happiness" of the yeast and may retard or even stop the digestion of sugars. Wyeast ales work best for me at 69-70 F.

I love ales compared to lagers but you might have more success brewing a lager at that temp. I wouldn't think washing would be optimal but worth a shot. I hope repitching works. Please let us know how it turned out.

BTW, Trondheim is a beautiful place and the people were great. I was there and Stavanger about 12 years ago during February. Not sure if I was hustled for a beer but you guys play pool a little different than I was used to. But that is another story.

Good luck to you!

Yabo72: I did pitch the whole pack, this question is about washing the yeast cake and reusing it for a later batch. I read a lot after making this beer and found out it's generally recommended to make a starter with liquid yeast, since even though the packs are advertised as good for 5 gallons, you really should have more yeast cells than are in the pack, and making a starter will yield much more yeast cells and therefore less stressed yeast.

A smack pack here in Norway is $10-15, so reusing it will definitely save me some money. I'll let you know how it goes From what I've read, many have great success with reusing yeast for several generations. But I might be better off buying Nottingham dry yeast for like $6, but I'm still a kit/extract brewer, and I want to improve the quality of my brews by using good yeast. I'm not especially worried about consistency, I think some of the fun is trying out stuff and seeing what happens!

So I decided to give it a shot and am now washing the yeast and will use it (with a starter) in my next brew. Perhaps a bit risky, but worst case scenario I learn a lesson Also, my next brew will be fermented warmer, and at a stable temperature.

FWIW this brew ended at 1.023 (bottled today), so it's pretty good, although I'd hoped to get it a little lower.

Yeah, Trondheim is nice Cool that you've been here Hanzo! But there is no real good LHBS here (just one, a general beer and wine making supply store, run by a couple of semi-old ladies with very little beer brewing knowledge), so I have to order most of my supplies from retailers elsewhere in the country/world. Apart from that it's good. Through a norwegian home brew forum I found out there are at least two other homebrewers in my street! Home & micro brewing is quickly getting VERY popular up here! There's a strong brewing tradition here, but home brewing was illegal for a many years until it was legalized again in 1999, and after that it's quickly gained momentum!

First batch? Skip the washing, and just dump a new batch of beer on the cake. I'm on brew number four on a packet of US-05 and the beer just keeps cranking out, no infections, no off flavors. The cake in the bottom of your fermenter is an enormous starter, so no worries about that headache.

To keep your yeast happy, keep your temps consistent. If you can consistently keep your beer at 57* then keep it there, preferably with a yeast that likes it there. White Labs "Cry Havoc" would be a good pick. Come spring and summer, switch it up and brew with something that likes the temperatures that you can keep.

When you want to switch yeasts, keep a bottle of a beer brewed with it and harvest the yeast from the bottle-priming and step up starters until you have enough to pitch. If you get a few yeasts that really blow your skirt up, you'll never have to blow hard earned cash on smack packs or White Labs' tubes ever again. I'm taking it even farther and trying to find a wild yeast that I can add to the stable.

Do not be a lazy brewer and pour a batch of beer on an entire yeast cake.

Why would you take the time to pick the perfect grain bill, the perfect hop schedule, mash temps, and everything else just to treat your yeast like crap? Treating your yeast well should be your #1 priority in brewing, everything else is secondary.

It seems like that's how beer was made for centuries until the advent of scientific method... I've never tasted anything off after pitching onto a yeast cake. Why go through the trouble of fixing a system that isn't broken? Have you ever tried it and actually had poor results, or just armchairing it?

I think you can flow your wort onto your yeast and it will be fine. While it is true that yeast are living organisms, I doubt anyone here can say with certainty that any specific conditions are optimal for care and feeding of a yeast, outside of temperature range and oxidation. Yeast are pretty forgiving - for thousands of years people have brewed without WL and Wyeast and chest freezers, aquarium controllers and iodophor - and the same yeast strains were used and re-used over and over again.

One of the great things about brewing is that it is generally pretty hard to screw up and you can try lots of things and come out far better than your imagination permits.

I have personally found that flowing wort onto the same yeast cake 3 times has yielded increasingly tasty beer but longer than that is less predictable (in my experience.)

With practically everything in life, there is a perfect way to do something. When it comes to beer, there is a perfect pitching rate. If EVERY commercial brewery is pitching their ales somewhere between 500k-1mm cells per mL per degree Plato, why do you think that your overpitching is the way to go?

I hate this phrase that pops up on HBT every goddamn day: "I do X and I've never had any problems." The most likely places this pops up are referring to not rehydrating dried yeast, not making starters, and pitching onto yeast cakes. But is your beer the best it could be? I could easily turn your question right back on you El Exorcisto: "are you just armchairing it" or have you actually tried to make beer using professional methods?

Everything I do in brewing is motivated by what I learn from people who are much more experienced than I am. For more on yeast, read the book, or listen to practically anything Chris White or Jamil say.

I repeat: only lazy people pitch onto yeast cakes. Of course it "works" but how well, and for how long can you repeat it?

kanzimonson, the original poster was basically asking, "Will it be OK?" and not, "How can I conform with the critical control parameters that comply with professional commercial standards?"

We are all striving to improve our methods, but dogma and homebrewing don't go together. We all try "stuff" and most of us have fun figuring out what we like and what we don't, what works for us and what doesn't. And we share those things with each other. Reading what really experienced brewers have done is fun and helpful. But, this is not work this is a hobby (for most of us) and people can pick and choose their own rules for their hobby as they see fit.

Have a homebrew and relax.

Back to the original poster... If you are new to the home brewing world, take some little steps. Pitching onto a yeast cake will not, I repeat NOT make a batch of beer that is undrinkable. So instead of spending time collecting and washing, spend time researching your next recipe, or trying to hunt down a cheaper supplier, or looking at going all-grain. These things are a lot more important than washing and pitching just the right amount of yeast, especially when you will screw up a half dozen other things on the wya to the fermentor. Know what? Your beer will still taste good. It may not be what you expected, but it will be good nonetheless. The best thing to do, as cliche as it may be is... well... RDWHAHB!!!

kanzimonson, if I thought it was worth rebutting, I would. People who quote gospel are always impossible to sway from their misguided attempts at guidance, and I'm not in the mood tonight to fight with a brick wall. Suffice it to say, that on brew number two or three, he wouldn't know the difference in flavor between a perfect pitch and overpitching onto a cake.

I agree that part of the joy of homebrewing is figuring out your process (heck, the brew day itself is my favorite thing). I just think that telling a new brewer to pitch onto a yeast cake is not narrowing their beer from its current state to a better one.

Your point about dogma is great. However, there are bad practices out there that are repeated so often that people think they are dogma. These are the things that drive me insane.

I totally admit that I'm an anal know-it-all. I'm also a homebrew evangelist, I love helping new brewers, and I want everyone to make fantastic beer. That's why I'm so vehement about sticking to good technique, to the point of being a jerk. And for that, I apologize.

Somehow I brewed for the last three months without a hydrometer... It still tasted lovely, even not knowing what my actual gravities and ABV were. My first four beers were hopped with hops picked from vines growing in a ditch in front of my parents' house (about a mile down the road from Ommegang). I even used Cooper's yeast with drinkable results... Evangelism is cute, good beer is better. The best beer, well, totally not worth my time to pursue that holy grail.

"and it worked for me"

How DID all those farmhouses in Wallonia brew their saison without it turning to piss before it hits the bottle? How exactly can any beer have been fermented being completely open to the sky and all it's nasties without tasting too atrocious to drink? Honestly, it's this preaching that keeps people from moving ahead and keeps them using extracts and buying new yeast every batch. Yeast works whether we want it to or not. Somehow West Africa brewed millett beer, South America brewed Chicha, and Europe brewed beer and wine before they even knew what yeast WAS. Park the attitude and the holier than thou crap. It didn't just work for me. It has worked for millions of people spanning hundreds, if not thousands of generations. The brewing of low alcohol spirits has been a pastime of mankind since long before we even knew what alcohol was. SO to the original poster, do not, I repeat do NOT listen to people who preach that one must tow the line with insane precision to brew drinkable beer. If a cave man can ferment honey sweetened water in a waterskin, wellm you get the point.

You're assuming that the beer brewed back then was as good in quality as today's beer, when we know for a fact it wasn't. There's a reason why nearly everyone brewed their own beer - it didn't keep.

You're also assuming that I believe beer is not good unless brewed to meticulous commercial standards. That's not true either - I can look back in my own brew log and find stupid practices I used to do and still ended up making beer... the beers were good enough at the time and I was happy to be drinking something I made. But now that I've learned more and eliminated some of those practices, I can vouch that my beer tastes worlds better. If only I had known earlier... if only I had found HBT earlier... if only I had read posts from more experienced brewers earlier... Of course, had I found HBT too early I probably would have run into other brewers giving me lazy advice like pitching onto yeast cakes. Personally, I like to steer new brewers in a positive direction.

A new brewer wants advice on how to make better beer. I don't believe pitching onto yeast cakes is better than pitching proper amounts - therefore I will never advise a new brewer to do this.

Hmmm... yep, should have followed my own advice earlier. Arguing against a preacher is like arguing with a toilet bowl...

Oh come on, you're being just as obstinate as I am. Hell, I even admitted that you can absolutely make beer by pitching onto a yeast cake, but you seem unable to agree on any of the points I've made despite my facts being backed by published authors, scientists, and professional brewers. Is it because I suggested you're lazy? I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings.

Preacher is a pretty good description for me because I definitely am handing down the gospel. However, it implies a level of blind acceptance and that's not true. Here's an example: in my earlier brewing days, I wanted to make an American barleywine but I wasn't ready to tackle starters, so I decided I'd pitch onto a yeast cake. I didn't know a lot about yeast, and I chose my strain entirely based on alcohol tolerance - 1762 Belgian Abbey 2 (the Rochefort strain). I had no knowledge about the kinds of esters this yeast produces - I just saw the 12% ABV tolerance and went with it. I brewed an American wheat first, and then dumped a barleywine right on top of the cake. I estimate that this was overpitching by about 5x, even for a barleywine. And guess what? All those fruity, plum, raisin, banana esters that this strain is famous for were nonexistent. In my case, this turned out to be a good thing because I wanted an American barleywine, but had I been trying to make a Belgian Strong Dark, I would have ended up with a bland malt soup. A fortuitous mistake overall, and an excellent illustration of why I now trust the experts and do what they say.

Over and over I was proven wrong by my shoddy techniques early on in brewing. I said, "Why invest in temp control? I like fruity esters!" FAIL. "There's no reason to use Starsan when I have bleach" FAIL. "I love crystal malts, I don't see a problem with using more than these recipes say" FAIL. "I can go ahead and bottle this beer after 8 days" FAIL. I was willing to admit my shortcomings and change my technique. Sounds more like a scientist than a preacher. On a deliciously atheistic note, in my experience it's the preacher who believes in something that's not true, but that's a discussion for another forum.

Making mistakes is the only way to gain an understanding of why what is wrong is wrong, and why what is right is right. I will most certainly concede that: A) I am in fact lazy; and that B) I do agree that stringent control over what one is doing allows very consistent and predictable results. I find it is much more important to understand why than to get a perfect result. Mainly because if I understand then I will get the right result next time. Starting out being obsessed with precision can eventually lead to cutting corners. Starting out sloppy, so long as one wants to improve what they do, will inevitably lead to more exacting practices not because someone told them to, but because they genuinely want to make a better product.

You're right, I am just as obstinate as you. I do however concede that some of the points you make are valid. You also have a PM in your box...

kanzimonson - good couple of posts, thanks. What happened when you bottled after 8 days? Did you have problems because your beer was not fully attenuated? Or was it something else?

After making the Moose Drool clone and realizing how awesome the 1968 London ESB strain is, I decided to try a few more beers with this yeast. Besides the maltiness of the strain, I also liked how quickly the yeast flocculated and clarified the beer as they dropped. So one of the next beers I tried was an APA. It cleared after 8 days, I got excited, and I ended up kegging it that day. Well, the final beer was a BUTTERBOMB of diacetyl. It was so gaggy and disgusting.

This is another great example of learning from my mistakes - at the time of this APA brew I didn't have a temp control system. I still use this yeast strain, and now I actually can get beers in the keg as soon as 10 days... and in some cases as little as 6! But this is because I'm able to really control the fermentation tempatures. I keep it around 68 for the first 3 days, then slowly ramp up to about 72-74 to make sure the yeast are really kickin' and cleaning things up.

A disclaimer: when I keg after 10 days, the beers still taste young... I just like to taste their evolution. The point is, they're clean and ready for packaging. Now, I do a diacetyl test (sensory, not laboratory) every time before packaging.

OP here - I see the discussion took off! An interesting read for me, at least

I ended up washing the yeast and now I have a nice sealed glass in my fridge with a thick layer of yeast on the bottom. My next beer will be made in another, smaller primary, so pitching on the cake was never an option this time. My next will probably be a barley wine based on a munton's kit I got really cheap, so I'll test the yeast on that one and see how it goes, and hopefully learn something in the process If it fails miserably I'll at least have learned something and lost very little.
So now I have to read up on making a starter!

Every time I think about homebrewing I realize I still have so incredibly much to learn, that for now I'll just lean back and enjoy the ride, while sucking in as much knowledge as I can and steadily improving my technique, knowledge and equipment. There are obviously many different techniques and viewpoints and opinions on all areas of homebrewing, so I decided early on to experiment, learn from my failures and over time get enough experience to make my own deciscions for how I want my beer to turn out.
This hobby is really teaching me a lesson in patience on so many levels!

In the mean time I thank you all here at HBT for providing a gold mine of information and a nice community Hopefully I'll be able to answer some questions myself soon