What size mason jars for harvesting/washing?

Doing some shopping later and I want to get into yeast washing to save money and create house strains.

What size jars is generally best for storing yeast? Don't want to buy jars too small or unnecessarily big for the job.

I like Quart jars for 5 or 10 gallon batch size and if you need more space just use 2 jars.

I use wide mouth pint jars.

I use quart Mason jars. Fermentor usually contains a little more than a quart, but I will end up with about 375 milliliters of yeast, compacted after a couple of weeks, in one quart jar. Multiple pint jars could be used also.

The yeast in a quart jar could be put into a pint jar later, but more work and some extra risk of contamination.

But I harvest first into a 1/2 gallon mason jar then decant into the smaller pint jars

For longer term storage of only the yeast that's had the water/beer decanted I use baby food jars.

I don't rinse/wash yeast anymore. I just collect yeastcake/slurry in jars. I collect in half-pint and pint mason jars. Half-pints usually have plenty for most standard gravity 5 gallon batches, whereas the pint jars have more than enough for any gravity 5 gallon batch. One jar per batch of beer whether I use all of the slurry or not (sometimes I'll only use a portion of the jar and dump the rest since it's not needed). I assume 1.5 billion cells per ml and choose the amount I'll use based on that (sometimes 1b/ml if really loose and thin, or 2b/ml if dense like clay and thick). I always fill the jars to within about 1/4" of the top. On brewday, when the boil starts, I pull the jar from the fridge and decant all of the beer on top to give room for the yeast to expand as it warms (it can expand quite a bit).

I started using recycled quart pickle jars or pasta sauce, salsa jars...they seem to work fine and were free

I just harvest slurry and repitch, with a quart jar you will get about 3/4 slurry, with 1/4 beer on top. I pour off the beer and then pitch into a new batch, quite a bit sticks inside the jar so your actually pitching about a pint plus of slurry using quart jars.

Check your recycling bucket, you may already have what you need. haha

When I was actually washing the yeast I would first put it in a quart jar, then transfer to pint jars. I would use the content of a single pint to repitch into a new beer.

I now overbuild my starters and save a bit into half pint jars as they take up less space. If I do harvest yeast from the fermentor I leave a little extra beer behind to loosen the cake and go directly into pints jars without washing.

I don't wash the yeast...I pour the slurry into 250ml (for 5gal batches) and 500ml (for 10gal batches). I boil to sanitize the mason jars. Just bottled some conan last night.

Like others, I just dump the yeast cake into pint jars. A five gallon batch will usually fill ~4 pint jars most of the way to the top. When brew day comes around, take a jar out of the fridge, decant the beer on top, leave the lid loose and let the slurry warm up until its pitching time.

I harvest yeast from the opposite end of the brew process. I get clean, healthy yeast from an overbuilt starter. I only need one of those small jam sized mason jars filled with decanted starter slurry and that has always been enough to start a new starter months later down the line

m00ps said:

I harvest yeast from the opposite end of the brew process. I get clean, healthy yeast from an overbuilt starter. I only need one of those small jam sized mason jars filled with decanted starter slurry and that has always been enough to start a new starter months later down the line

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This is intriguing. What size yeast starter do you initially use to compensate for not all of it being pitched? How much of that do you store for future starters?

Actually look at the calculators for two step starters.. If you have even 5% vitality you should be able to get a full sized starter from any cell count greater than zero in a one liter starter stepped into two. I am going to experiment with this further...

UndeadFred said:

Actually look at the calculators for two step starters.. If you have even 5% vitality you should be able to get a full sized starter from any cell count greater than zero in a one liter starter stepped into two. I am going to experiment with this further...

Click to expand...

When you say stepped into two you do not mean split into two correct? Do you mean a one liter starter that you step up again?

arnobg said:

This is intriguing. What size yeast starter do you initially use to compensate for not all of it being pitched? How much of that do you store for future starters?

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I usually just make the starter 300-400ml more than I think I need. Less than a quarter of the decanted slurry ends up going into the vial or mason jar, but this works very well. Ive taken a number of my yeast strains past 10 generations without any difference I can notice. But yeah, I just store 1 mason jar or vial full of decanted slurry. Once it settles in the fridge, its only like the bottom quarter that is pure yeast. But they always are able to get a starter moving the next morning after pitching them

Good info. I'm about to do a Bourbon Porter OG 1.066 with Wyeast 1728. Have a post I just made in the yeast forum about a starter for this. The calculators are telling me I need 3-4L starter just for that beer alone, so harvesting from it would require more I assume.

Yes, cold crash, and put more wort in...