First time washing yeast

[rob6239]

Thought I'd give this a go. You can see just a subtle colour difference in photos but the bottom layer is the colour I thought yeast usually looks like and top seems like proteins or dead cells maybe ?

Or is the bottom proteins and trub and top is yeast I want to keep?

 

[scottywags]

From the videos I've watched, the top stuff is what you want.

 

[sky4meplease]

Typically your looking for the creamy white portion being viable cells though I would expect the other layers would be a mix of live cells, dead cells and trub.
For harvested yeast I would estimate the milliliters you have of viable yeast slurry and multiply by 1.0-1.25 billion cells per milliliter.

 

[TANSTAAFB]

Save all of it. I washed yeast for years because I live a couple hours away from a HBS. After reading about a series of experiments (Brulosophy?) in which the content of washed vs unwashed yeast was examined under a microscope and a significant amount of live cells were found to be in the part of the slurry (dark stuff on top) that usually gets tossed I stopped washing yeast. Now I leave enough beer in the fermenter to swirl up the cake and pour all of it into a 1/2 gallon Mason jar. The slurry settles out and has a nice protective layer of beer over the top instead of water. Less messing with it means less chance for contamination as well.