Yeast Washing for Highly Flocculant Strains

I am planning on washing the WLP002 yeast from a batch of mild. I read through the yeast washing sticky, but didn't get much conclusive information about washing highly flocculant yeast strains like WLP002.

Mainly, I am wondering whether or not I will be able to get the WLP002 to suspend in the sterile water long enough to let the trub fall to the bottom. I know when I have made starters with WLP002 that this yeast tends to clump together, and once it does, it can be very difficult to homogenize.

Has anyone had success washing the WLP002 / Wyeast 1968 strain?

If anyone can chime in on this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Once you have the watered down trub/yeast in your big jar, do some experimenting with how long it takes for the trub to settle and see how much trub vs. yeast you have. First let it settle for a day or two to see the levels. Then shake it up again like mad man and see if it changes. I've been finding that the trub settles faster the second and third time around. Once you get a good idea of how much is trub there is and how long it takes to settle out, do it one last time and decant it at the right time. The proportion of yeast to trub and the time it takes varies wildly by strain and batch.

I asked a very similar question and didn't get much of a response. I tried to rinse and save some 1968. When I rinse yeast, I try to get four containers of yeast. With 1056, I can get about 50ml of yeast slurry in the bottom of each. When I rinsed 1968, I got about 15ml in each.

The difficulty was all in the fact that the yeast puck on the bottom of the primary is so freakin thick! You can try to stir it around and break it up, but it doesn't seem to come apart very easily! Of course, this was with me trying to not aerate the cooled boiled-water too much. I'm sure I could've really gone at it, but this would have reduced the quality of the yeast I would end up saving.

So I don't really know what to tell you except stir, stir, stir to get those yeast broken up and in suspension.

I washed some 007 recently. I used cold water and did it in reverse. Most of the yeast flocculated almost immediately, leaving the trub suspended, which I poured off.

I've washed 002 several times with great results using the method from this site. 10 minutes seemed about the right amount of time (for me) to let most of the trub material settles and still get yeast. I have on average half to three-quarters of an inch of yeast in my mason jars when I'm done. Of course you really don't see that until after it's been in the fridge for a day or so.

Was just planning on starting the exact same thread! Going to wash some 002 from the Moose Drool clone next week.

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This evening, I went ahead and tried my hand at washing the WLP002 yeast cake from my mild. As I expected, the yeast was very chunky and wouldn't homogenize at all. I ended up mixing the yeast cake with some cold sterile water, shaking it a little, and letting it settle for a couple minutes. It was pretty obvious that the yeast was settling out very quickly. I ended up decanting off most of the liquid on top of the yeast. I poured in some more cold sterile water, shook it up again, and let it settle again. After about 5 minutes, I poured off the liquid on top again, and filled up two pint jars with the yeasty bottom layer.

This is what my jars look like after settling for about 30 minutes. I can start to see what I think is a darker trub/dead yeast layer forming a second layer on top of the yeast.

I have had good luck washing less flocculant yeasties, such as WLP001, Rogue Pacman, and Wyeast 2042. We'll see how this WLP002 turns out next time I brew an English beer.

Cool, man, thanks for posting the results of your little experiment. Feel free to post more photos as the yeast settles!

Just to update, I followed EvilGnome6's advice a few weeks ago and was able to wash kind of a buttload of WLP002. After pouring the water in the fermenter, stirring well, then pouring the top layer back into 2 big jars, I let them sit overnight. The next day I shook them up good again, and this time the trub settled much quicker. Waited one more day and did it again, and it settled even quicker. Then decanted into smaller jars.

The one weird thing was that the yeast was pretty brown, and a little hard to distinguish from the trub. This was only my 4th time washing yeast, but every other time (even when washing from a dark beer) the yeast has been pretty white. But after shaking a few times it was pretty easy to tell the fluffy yeast from the gritty trub.

Here's what I collected: that big layer at the bottom of the big jar is all yeast! I ended up splitting that into 2 smaller jars, too. I just used one of them on a bitter I brewed today - made a starter 2 days ago and it worked great.

Palefire said:

Just to update, I followed EvilGnome6's advice a few weeks ago and was able to wash kind of a buttload of WLP002. After pouring the water in the fermenter, stirring well, then pouring the top layer back into 2 big jars, I let them sit overnight. The next day I shook them up good again, and this time the trub settled much quicker. Waited one more day and did it again, and it settled even quicker. Then decanted into smaller jars.

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Glad to hear it worked!

ISUBrew79 said:

This evening, I went ahead and tried my hand at washing the WLP002 yeast cake from my mild. As I expected, the yeast was very chunky and wouldn't homogenize at all. I ended up mixing the yeast cake with some cold sterile water, shaking it a little, and letting it settle for a couple minutes. It was pretty obvious that the yeast was settling out very quickly. I ended up decanting off most of the liquid on top of the yeast. I poured in some more cold sterile water, shook it up again, and let it settle again. After about 5 minutes, I poured off the liquid on top again, and filled up two pint jars with the yeasty bottom layer.

This is what my jars look like after settling for about 30 minutes. I can start to see what I think is a darker trub/dead yeast layer forming a second layer on top of the yeast.

I have had good luck washing less flocculant yeasties, such as WLP001, Rogue Pacman, and Wyeast 2042. We'll see how this WLP002 turns out next time I brew an English beer.

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How did this work out for you?

I had a mixture of WLP005 British and Nottingham dry from a N. UK Brown .. Very flocculant... I had one jar look like the above picture, but the others had far less. I washed a 5gal with 4 qts of 20minute boiled and cooled tap, swirled and decanted that back into the quart jars. Let that settle for 5 minutes and decanted those into a gallon jug. Let that sit for a day and used the yeast that flocced from that for an IIPA. Took off in 6 hrs (2 days ago; still fermenting).

On a different note, what about capturing the blowoff from these high floc strains? Is this essentially top cropping (assuming your blowoff jug and hoses are clean and sanitized)? I would think this would be the most awesome yeast to reuse of the entire batch...

maxhavoc said:

On a different note, what about capturing the blowoff from these high floc strains? Is this essentially top cropping (assuming your blowoff jug and hoses are clean and sanitized)? I would think this would be the most awesome yeast to reuse of the entire batch...

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Don't know if it performs the same for others, but Wyeast 1968 didn't form a huge krauesen for me, maybe 3 inches or so. It didn't blowoff. But, that *was* a mild I was brewing, so dunno what it does with beer that's a little stronger...

MattHollingsworth said:

How did this work out for you?

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Well, I never actually used that yeast. It was several weeks old and I ended up throwing it away. I now have access to large quantities of WLP005 British Ale yeast slurry, so I decided it wasn't worth keeping the 002 around any longer.

Wyeast 1968: in the first washing the white yeast layer dropped out faster to the bottom than the very dark trub layer and darker beer layer so poured off the top dark trub portion.

Then for the second wash added more distilled water and re-mixed the chunky cottage cheese like white yeast into solution with a big spoon. Which then separated into the normal three layers with the middle white yeast/water layer and the darker trubish solids falling to the bottom.

Finally siphoned off the white yeast/water layer with a turkey baster into clear beer bottles and topped up with distilled water.

For what its worth, I figured out today that if you add your boiled and cooled water to your slury to make a very thin slury and chill in the fridge for 20-30 min the yeast will crash right through the trub to the bottom, leaving the trub above a nice clean yeast slury on the bottom. This was done with 002 and 007.

Here's my preferred technique for harvesting yeast:

Let's say i need 300b cells to fermenter my batch with a 2l stater. This starter gives me 75b cells by 500ml. So if i want to harvest 75b cells for my next batch, i prepare a stater of 2.5l to get 375b cells.

While my starter is fermenting, i boil a 500ml mason jar w/lid to sanitize it.

When my stater is done, i swirl it to get all the yeast suspended and then i save a pint of it in my sanitized mason jar.

I put it in my keezer at about 4 Celsius and i don't tight the lid to let the co2 escape. 3-4 days later, i tight the lid.

Perfectly clean yeast w/ no trub.

I pitch the rest of my starter.


I hope it is clear!

Jean

Not sure I quite understand this. Also I've never made a starter so be patient. How do you get five times the amount of yeast by starting with only a 75B starter? Do you just put five times the starter malt and then how can you be sure you got 375B yeast? Please make clearer.

Hello GMonken, i refer you to this article for knowing how to make a starter and save a part of it for future brews. Dont be shy if you have any questions.

http://brulosophy.com/how-i-brew/yeast-starter-method/