orangehero
Well-Known Member
You should use sterile water...you're introducing a bunch of contaminants in the washing process as it is. The best method would be to pressure cook a few jars of clean water, that way you have sterile water and jars.
I am wondering if anyone washes yeast with this method...
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Duke_Rogers
New Member
one guy I seen took his whole bucket/carboy, added sterilized water(that has been boiled and cooled) to the whole yeast cake, let it stratify and then pour it into one jar. It's one way to do it
LoloMT7
Well-Known Member
I'm with Weezy.. to me it doesn't make much sense to use the yeast in your beer and then have to wash it once it is a generation older. I just make a starter bigger then I need and I fill up a vial with part of it. That way it's like I didn't even use the vial I'd bought
McCoy
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I've read this is widely agreed upon for a particular sour blend, maybe the Roeselare blend. I wouldn't be surprised if this was true of other yeast as well, particular some Belgian and German strains where stressing the yeast can help bring out the more expressive qualities. Additionally, for high gravity beers I might want use a very large pitch but not have to deal with a large starter so racking onto a yeast cake or a portion of a yeast cake is most convenient.
a lot of no-so-good advice in here (and some good stuff too, to be fair)
listen to Jamil and John Palmer's podcast on yeast washing and storage. It will answer every question in this thread
http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/543
listen to Jamil and John Palmer's podcast on yeast washing and storage. It will answer every question in this thread
http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/543
Weezy
Well-Known Member
Understood but this isn't really the point. We're talking about the mechanics of yeast harvesting. It's about what purpose the yeast harvesting is serving. I see three cases (there may surely be more, like a plating and a real yeast bank, but these are easy, common, homebrewer methods):
1. brewing a small beer so that you can build up a nice yeast cake for a big beer,
2. washing the post fermentation yeast for repitching in future batches.
3. collecting small portions of yeast harvest from new starters for freezing.
#2 is beneficial to those who brew often and large jars of yeast kept in the fridge won't just go bad from non-use. The downside to #2 is that the longevity of the yeast is directly dependent on the quality of the wash job. And it's a fair bit more work than #3.
#3 is great for people like me who like to keep a couple yeast strains around for months, for the occasional brew session and to save a few bucks. for example, I have a saison strain that I'll use 2-3 times a year, and when the slants are gone I buy a new tube. It's very easy to pull a small portion of yeast, with minimal cleaning effort, from a fresh starter for freezing, then just dump the rest of the starter yeast into the fermenter for the current brew session. I really only need to buy one tube of the few strains I use each year, brewing once or occasionally twice a month.
No disrespect to JZ (cuz I've certainly learned a lot from him and I will be buying the book), but to those of us who listen to the BN, don't you ever get the impression that their ideas are *very* west coast centric. They drone on and on about dry beer and attenuation being king. JZ probably sneezes chico strain. JZ flatly even said he didn't have any really good east coast beer from his recent trip (NHC). East coast beer is generally sweeter than west coast beer. The yalso have a half hearted grudge against midwest and east coast breweries evident whenever top beer lists are brought up, etc. Somehow sweet beer is under attenuation or poor recipe development. A good example of the differentiation is the last Session podcast, with Summit Brewing out of Minnesota. The brewer guest (Damian McConn, classically trained in the UK) had a very nice discussion regarding the benefits of different types of malts, how US malts are highly enzymatic, the benefits of less attenuating and estery yeast, and the delicateness and difficulty of obtaining a quality residual maltiness/sweetness in a beer, especially in the smaller beers common in other parts of the world. There's more than one way to skin a cat and all are correct in their own way and for their own reasons...just like what we're talking about here with yeast washing.
off topic but had to reply. i listen to the BN regularly, and you nailed it weezy. I thought the summit interview was awesome, I am going to listen to it again and try a few of his pointers. one of the brewcasters that seems to not be so much on the dry dry dry bandwagon is tasty!
on the yeast washing, the last few batches of beer we did were all done from the same harvest. we harvested the yeast out of a fresh batch of blonde ale, stored it in a sanitized jar, and just added roughly 80ml of slurry to a 1.5 liter stirred starter. beers turned out good, so it seemed to work well.
on the yeast washing, the last few batches of beer we did were all done from the same harvest. we harvested the yeast out of a fresh batch of blonde ale, stored it in a sanitized jar, and just added roughly 80ml of slurry to a 1.5 liter stirred starter. beers turned out good, so it seemed to work well.
andyphil27
Member
Back to the OP's question. Have you seen this thread? https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/yeast-washing-illustrated-revisited-318684/
Down a ways he says "+ You can use jars, tubes, & vials as small as you can get with an extra step of decanting, but leaving a slight bit of water to swirl the yeast around."
So an idea for using less fridge space would be to decant the yeast one more time into smaller jars (some people use 4 oz jelly jars or the preform vials) and store those. This might be better than pouring them all into one container.
Down a ways he says "+ You can use jars, tubes, & vials as small as you can get with an extra step of decanting, but leaving a slight bit of water to swirl the yeast around."
So an idea for using less fridge space would be to decant the yeast one more time into smaller jars (some people use 4 oz jelly jars or the preform vials) and store those. This might be better than pouring them all into one container.
Just a quick note from my own personal experience, I usually boil my mason jars that I store my yeast in. The one time that I used Star-San to use an extra jar last minute, it detonated about 5 days later in my fridge. I can't say for sure, but I think what happened is that the Star-San re-energized some of the yeast, and consumed some residual sugars in the wort. To say it was messy is an understatement, and it was a little unsettling to be next to the fridge when it happened. We weren't living in the best neighborhood at the time, and the mind wanders as to what possibly just happened. Thankfully we were not exposed to the shards of glass.
Since then, I make damn sure that the yeast is finished, and I no longer use Star-San to disinfect my jars.
Since then, I make damn sure that the yeast is finished, and I no longer use Star-San to disinfect my jars.
Elysium
Well-Known Member
I use active oxygen and none of my jars has ever exploded.
bja
Well-Known Member
I've been using star san for years and never had one explode.
I think you're grabbing at straws here.
djt17
Well-Known Member
I have also used StarSan for years to sanitize my mason jars; never had a "detonation."
kombat
Well-Known Member
I'm another StarSan-sanitizer Mason-jar yeast rancher, never had an explosion.
I've had one infection, and I've had a few build up a little pressure which I vented, but nothing's ever exploded (knock on wood).
I've had one infection, and I've had a few build up a little pressure which I vented, but nothing's ever exploded (knock on wood).
Epimetheus
Well-Known Member
I got tired of Ball jars in the fridge (OK, it was DW who suggested they depart for elsewhere) and started freezing yeast. A small bottle of glycerine from the Wally World pharmacy and 50ML centrifuge vials. Easy.
Maybe 'reactivate' was improper vernacular. It's my understanding that upon dilution Star-San is effectively yeast food. I figured that it allowed fermentation to re-commence. Evidently this is misplaced, and perhaps it just hadn't fully fermented the wort in the starter.
I don't know, but I'm not really getting any other ideas to buy into here. Just a lot of people telling me that I'm wrong.
bja
Well-Known Member
I don't know, but I'm not really getting any other ideas to buy into here. Just a lot of people telling me that I'm wrong.
Mason jars and lids are not designed to hold pressure. Under pressure the lid will lift enough to release pressure, unless the ring is tightened to the point that doesn't allow the lid to lift until a dangerously high pressure is reached. This could explain why only one exploded.
Could this be the reason? Possibly, and I can tell you for sure that it was not the Star san.
I assumed this to be exactly the reason, however if you're talking about sealing yeast inside one of these jars with recently boiled water (read minimal, if any oxygen) and having finished fermenting, I don't understand where the pressure would come from...unless fermentation continued somehow. Although now that I think of it, contamination could have contributed to fermentation. Interesting that this would have taken place at refrigerator temps.
The only logical explanation is that it came from CO2 production, which I had assumed (incorrectly) was attributed to the Star San. Now the only logical thing that I can draw as a conclusion is that the wort was somehow not finished fermenting, however I find that confusing as my process has not changed outside of the Star San change. If there's another reason, it's lost on me, and there are no other alternative explanations to be found throughout this discussion.
I've been doing this for two years now, and I've never had a problem before, or since this incident. Using Star San would definitely make my life easier, so I'm glad to know that this is wrong, but I would like to know conclusively.
bja
Well-Known Member
I completely agree that CO2 was produced from incomplete fermentation. I often open a jar and release slight pressure. I was only giving a possible explanation why only one exploded. Starsan can be slippery. If the jar and ring was still wet, it would've been very easy to over tighten the lid.
No, it went from room temperature to the refrigerator. Two days later:
*BOOM*
At this point the only two options I think I cannot rule out was either the fermentation wasn't finished, which would surprise me, or that it caught something in the ambient air that allowed it to ferment further than the yeast would have otherwise.
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