Yeast harvest question...

[Pugs13]

Yesterday I did my second yeast harvest from our bitter using English Ale Yeast. The first time I did I had nice stratification and could tell what was sediment, then spent or dead yeast, and finally the good yeast. This time I used the same pro



cess (worked great) but its as if I cannot get my yeast to stratify. Here is a pic of it after about 1hr. I washed it once after the initial water used to harvest from carboy. It smells great, looks nice, but cannot determine if its all spent or all good! Let me know what you think. Thanks.

 

[schmiddy]

This is just how my harvested yeast looks, and I pitch the whole jar in the next batch.

 

[Pugs13]

This is just how my harvested yeast looks, and I pitch the whole jar in the next batch.

Usually I do a yeast starter before hand. I don't think I need this much yeast though for a 3.9% bitter plus doing a yeast starter. Did you have any issues so far?

 

[pabloj13]

That looks like you have a good bit of yeast. When I can't see layers I just do it by time. Shake like crazy, let it settle for ~30 minutes and then decant. I start with 1 gallon plus 4 pints of water, decant ~3/4 gallon of that, shake and then decant into pint jars.