Acceptable Yeast Harvest from Starter?

[aggiejason]

The last couple of brews I've done, I did a starter for my yeast (using White Labs and have used a few different strains). Anyhow, just before pitching the yeast starter into my 5 gallons or wort, I sanitized the original white labs tube with star San and poured some of the starter back into it, capped it, and put it into my fridge. I was then going to use this for the next time I did a brew that needed that strain.

I was sharing this idea with another local homebrew friend and he said that he thought that the yeast containers needed to be fully sterilized. He uses glass pipettes to transfer and has a fully sterilized environment where he puts his yeast back into test tubes. He didn't think my method was clean enough and that I was risking infected yeast.

I don't want to blow a whole batch of beer if what I did was wrong.

Is my method good enough or do I need to throw out my previous harvests and be more diligent with complete sterilization?

 

[kh54s10]

Fully sterilized would be better, though I would only sanitize. I make starters then make 4 vials for freezing. I use 5ml yeast, 5ml glycerin and 10 ml water. I boil and cool the water and use Starsan to sanitize the 20 ml vials.

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

Sterilized is better, but not required. Especially if you have a low number of generations. Have a look at my yeast harvesting, a non-slant method.

MC