Yeast rinsing / repitching help?

[hopsauce]

Hi,

I attempted to 'rinse' the kolsch yeast from my previous blonde ale to repitch. I haven't done it before and I tried to follow the procedure from how to brew (which was similar to many online).

However, I found that the yeast / trub layer didn't separate at all (just a hazy mess), so I just left it in the fridge overnight. It now looks like attached. I tend to have a separation layer in my fermenter, i'm not sure if some of it is from finally crushing (as I BIAB).

It doesn't look anything like the pics online and i'm not sure if I have something that is worth attempting to create a starter with.

Any suggestions (or questions) would be much appreciated. Liquid yeast is expensive here ($19 a pack) so i'd like to try and salvage it if I can.



Thanks!

 

[LLBeanJ]

Sounds like the slurry was just recently harvested, correct? If so, you can pitch it just as it is into your next batch. Or you can take a portion of it (say, around 1/2 cup or ~100 ml) and make a starter. You can assume there are about 1-1.5 billion cells per ml of slurry in that jar, so 100 ml of thick slurry is going to be 100-150 billion cells, perfect for making a 1L starter. I would just pitch it as-is right into your next batch, though, but I would probably save some of it to make a future starter.

As far as rinsing, goes, there's really no good reason to bother with it. As you've found, it can be tricky to do correctly and I find it to be a waste of time and effort. I reuse yeast pretty often and never rinse. Every batch, I do one of two things: 1) make a starter (either from new yeast (pretty rare, maybe once every 15-20 batches I brew) or from clean yeast saved from a previous starter (more likely)); or 2) harvest yeast directly from the fermenter and pitch it into another batch (I do this about every 2nd or 3rd brew. Sometimes I will brew three batches back-to-back-to-back using harvested fermenter yeast).

 

[hopsauce]

Thanks for the prompt reply, yeah I harvested the slurry yesterday.

I'm confused because I tried to follow the process perfectly and it went nothing like described!

I think i'll overpitch vs the calculators given i'm not too sure of the composition of what i've harvested.

So to repitch, just warm it up and pitch some of it (say half, given it's a 1 litre container)?

 

[LLBeanJ]

Can't say for sure since I don't know the OG of the brew, but my guess is that it should be plenty of yeast. Even pitching 1/3 of the jar would most likely be more than enough.

 

[PKnotlost]

That looks right to me, regardless of what pictures your referring to. You can just dump that in your next bucket of wort and you will be good.