Anyone else ever try bottling a special yeast/trub sample?

[Hoochin'Fool]

After transferring my last beer to the bottling bucket, I thought I'd try saving some of the yeast for re-use, by filling my first bottle up with mostly sludge from the bottom of the fermenter (I got about a half-fill, before the spigot clogged).

Is 4 or so ounces of trub/sludge with another 2 ounces of beer on top of it going to need anything more than being brought to room temperature before pitching onto my next wort (next week)?

edit: nothing "special" about the yeast (just us-05), just "special" in that it's not really intended for drinking

 

[mashdar]

Late reply, but I believe general consensus is that you figure ~1B ces per ml. 4oz ~= 120ml, so 120B cells. (I think it's compacted ml, so you may find you have even less.)

Then you lose viability over time (~10% per month?).

In most cases that seems a little low.

(This is all based on best recollection, based on rando forum disussions, so take it with a grain of salt.)

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

My half-a-bottle (capped!) of sludge worked out just fine on the next beer wort I dumped it into, and that ended up being 3 weeks later.

 

[mashdar]

Nice!

I guess commercial liquid yeast has ~100B and is fine most of the time?

 

[user 338926]

My half-a-bottle (capped!) of sludge worked out just fine on the next beer wort I dumped it into, and that ended up being 3 weeks later.

Cool. Next time if you can, maybe save a little more. It's difficult to overpitch such that it has a negative impact.

I had just kegged a batch of Kolsch this past week and I saved the trub in three jars because it was a nice clean yeast cake. Yesterday I made a 10 gallon batch of porter and I took the one pint jar and dumped the entire thing into the fermenter. It had probably separated half an inch of beer on top which I poured off first. The rest was yeast .

My gravity was 1.050 and I'm sure I heavily over pitched it, like maybe 5X. I took my jar from the fridge and threw it in my sanitizer bucket for a while before I dumped it in the fermenter. Maybe 10 minutes. I didn't worry about the temperature and I did stir very vigorously once it was in there so I didn't have any big clumps. I went out to get a bite to eat and when I returned it was in full fermentation mode. Non-stop activity on a three-piece airlock. It would have blown and s-trap dry. I will switch to one of those after it slows down.

Good luck with your beer. Remember most people limit the ReUse to three to five generations. I typically stop at 3, but that's just me. I also tend to really bounce around on the styles of beer so I try not to mix them up too much. But again that's just me.

 

[Wolfbayte]

After transferring my last beer to the bottling bucket, I thought I'd try saving some of the yeast for re-use, by filling my first bottle up with mostly sludge from the bottom of the fermenter (I got about a half-fill, before the spigot clogged).

Is 4 or so ounces of trub/sludge with another 2 ounces of beer on top of it going to need anything more than being brought to room temperature before pitching onto my next wort (next week)?

edit: nothing "special" about the yeast (just us-05), just "special" in that it's not really intended for drinking

I do exactly this with two minor changes:

First, I add 2, 3, and sometimes 4, bottles of bottled water. After swirling the bucket to dilute the trub, it pours nicely from the spigot.

Second, I use Bell canning jars from Goodwill rather than beer bottles. I seal them with plastic lids from Walmart, labeled with bread clips held by rubber bands from asparagus. On one side of the clip, I use a fine point Sharpie to write the date, yeast strain, and beer brewed; on the other I write the generation of the yeast (I, II, III, IV, etc.). In the frig, the trub settles to the bottom.

Third, before pitching, I decant most of the beer on top, put the lid back on, shake, then pitch this personal smak-pak, trub and all, with great results.

The pic below shows one from an Irish Red. The beer is on top, trub on bottom, and a thin layer of yeast in the middle.

In December, I won a local beer comp with toffee porter fermented with 4th generation Kviek Voss. I'm now drinking a hazy galaxy blonde fermented from the same original strain that started in January 2022. I'll call it quits after that and start a new one from the blonde I brewed with S-05.

Cheers.