Is re-using yeast safe?

I read on a website about a technique for re-using, for example, a Wyeast smack pack up to five times for different brews. Has anyone done this? Is this normal and I'm just a sucker wasting it on one batch?

Many breweries re-use their yeast many times.

Why can't we? It mostly comes down to sanitation (for us).

Do some more reading on the subject, especially on yeast washing.

I recommend the washing technique because it is really easy and you "clean" all the other stuff (trub and such) out of the yeast. There are plenty of sites on-line to read about this technique and others.

It'll save you $$$ and you'll have some fun at it. You'll be glad you did.

One of the very simplest ways of stretching your yeast is to make a large starter and bottle it. This avoids most of the sanitation and mutation problems involved in harvesting yeast.

Sometimes I'll make a starter and then make it larger and larger then only use half of it for a batch.

Fudd said:

I read on a website about a technique for re-using, for example, a Wyeast smack pack up to five times for different brews. Has anyone done this? Is this normal and I'm just a sucker wasting it on one batch?

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As HB99 said, washing is the way to go...here's a good link on yeast washing from Wyeast.

Another way to make a yeast tube go for more than one use is to only use part of it and build it up two or three times in a starter.

just me, but i don't see the big savings in re-pitching yeast as a homebrewer. i guess if you had a special strain, or if you didn't have regular access to a good supply of liquid yeast. i pay $6-$7 bucks for what i know is a fresh vial of yeast. i make a nice starter, and boom! it's off and running. is it more of the experience and novelty of re-pitching for a homebrewer????? not knocking it, but i just can't see the justification.

Yeast can end up being 20-25% of the cost of a batch for me. (At $5.00 for a smack pack.) If I can re-use it a couple of times, it helps a lot with costs.

-walker

some of us dont live near a home brew shop and didn't think to order some back up dry yeast. therefor we reuse yeast because we have to if we want to brew. i just reused yeast that was in the bottle on my last batch. i did it the easy way. about 2 days before brew day, i made a starter. every home brew that i drank i poured the yeast cake in the bottle into my starter. on brew day(early) i made a second larger starter and added my other starter. worked great!!!

I re-use yeast all the time and there are plenty of threads out here on the process but I save substantial $ in doing so. I've made 5 batches on one WL english ale yeast tube and soon to be 6 before I retire that one. That's $42 saved and allowed me to make two more 5g batches from that savings (avg grain bill $20). Yea, it's worth it to me and quite easy to do.

Yeah, man, it's an enormous savings! I usually get 3-4 jars of yeast per generation (could go for more, but they would languish too long in the fridge), so just 5 generations is worth ~$100. I don't actually expect to see that much return as I may not stay on the same yeast that long, but $30-50 savings is no problem, especially with something like 1056. I've already done 5 batches with my 1056 and still have 3 jars of 3rd gen yeast.

BeeGee said:

I usually get 3-4 jars of yeast per generation

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Could you outline your technique again...that Wyeast page is confusing me a little. TIA

El Pistolero said:

Could you outline your technique again...that Wyeast page is confusing me a little. TIA

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After racking a beer to secondary I add some water (if necessary) to swirl the trub into a liquid slurry. I then dump that into a sanitized 1g water pitcher, add enough water to make it more 'liquidy' than 'slurry', cover, and let it sit for 30-60 minutes. After that time the bulk of the non-yeast has settled to the bottom trub-like leaving a yeasty liquid above it. Decant that into as many sanitized jars as you think you can use and refrigerate. By morning you'll have 1/4"-1/2" of good clean yeast on the bottom of each jar.

When I get ready to use it, I decant the amberish-clear liquid from the top leaving just enough to slurry the cake and pitch the yeast cake slurry into my starter.

Hmm, I've never "washed" the slurry. Might give that a try next time around...

BeeGee said:

After racking a beer to secondary I add some water (if necessary) to swirl the trub into a liquid slurry. I then dump that into a sanitized 1g water pitcher, add enough water to make it more 'liquidy' than 'slurry', cover, and let it sit for 30-60 minutes. After that time the bulk of the non-yeast has settled to the bottom trub-like leaving a yeasty liquid above it. Decant that into as many sanitized jars as you think you can use and refrigerate. By morning you'll have 1/4"-1/2" of good clean yeast on the bottom of each jar.

When I get ready to use it, I decant the amberish-clear liquid from the top leaving just enough to slurry the cake and pitch the yeast cake slurry into my starter.

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Thanks, that's a much better explanation than the one on the Wyeast site...seems like they're complicating it a bit. What size jars are you storing them in?

I haven't done any yeast saving for myself yet, but the general consensus from the vast reading on the subject suggests not saving the yeast from the secondary.. for a number of reasons which include: fatigue, mutations and possible contamination from racking to secondary.

Most folks I've talked with about yeast ranching concur the best bet is to either culture out of the primary or culture out of your white labs or wyyeast pack BEFORE you pitch it. Make a separate starter, pitch a bit of your liquid yeast into that, let it ferment out and save it in the fridge.. use your usual starter for the ferment.

There's a number of ways to go about doing this... the 'cleanest' yeast is going to come right out of the original packaging though.


My problem with yeast ranching atleast in the way most folks use it, decanting a slurry into a mason jar and re-using it within a week is that I rarely brew something back to back that uses the same yeast styles.

What I'd like to do is start making slants using gelatin or agar. But then I'd need a pressure cooker and a couple of other items to my already pretty large stash of brewing equipment. This can allow one to save yeast cultures for up to a year. The small 50ml vials take up literally no space and having a 'rack' of them in the freezer would be the ish. On top of that you can always re-culture your slant when you have a slant that's starting to age too much.

bad-arse.

El Pistolero said:

Thanks, that's a much better explanation than the one on the Wyeast site...seems like they're complicating it a bit. What size jars are you storing them in?

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I use small jelly jars with mason lids, like you get at the grocery store for homemade jellies...I guess they're in the 6-8oz range? Seem to hold enough yeast for a starter, more than a White Labs vial in any case. I think a regular size jelly jar would be even better, but I have the small ones (which hold 100g of fresh roasted coffee perfectly). Plastic might work, as well, but I'm more comfortable with glass.

BeeGee said:

I use small jelly jars with mason lids, like you get at the grocery store for homemade jellies...I guess they're in the 6-8oz range?

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I went looking for those this weekend, but with canning season over everyone's sold out. I do have some pint size mason's tho...guess those will do. Thanks for the help.

BeeGee said:

After racking a beer to secondary I add some water (if necessary) to swirl the trub into a liquid slurry. I then dump that into a sanitized 1g water pitcher, add enough water to make it more 'liquidy' than 'slurry', cover, and let it sit for 30-60 minutes. After that time the bulk of the non-yeast has settled to the bottom trub-like leaving a yeasty liquid above it. Decant that into as many sanitized jars as you think you can use and refrigerate. By morning you'll have 1/4"-1/2" of good clean yeast on the bottom of each jar.

When I get ready to use it, I decant the amberish-clear liquid from the top leaving just enough to slurry the cake and pitch the yeast cake slurry into my starter.

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I did this a couple times, but decided that making a large starter and using only half of it was easier to do. (No mucking with trub in the fermenter.)

I just pitch half of the starter and keep the other half in the fridge. Then use the remaining half to make a new starter the next time I want to use the yeast. I'm planning to do this for 5 generations before just coughing up the cash for a new smack-pack and starting the whole process over again.

Fridge currently contains 20oz soda bottles that are holding:
irish ale (washed from my stout's primary - 1st gen)
american ale II (washed from my fat tire's primary - 1st gen)
american ale I (remaining half of a starter - 1st gen)
scottish ale (remaining half of a starter - 1st gen)

-walker

Walker said:

I did this a couple times, but decided that making a large starter and using only half of it was easier to do. (No mucking with trub in the fermenter.)

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I'm primary fermenting in a bucket, so it's pretty accessible in terms of swishing the trub out, plus it gets me halfway done cleaning Splitting starters seems like a good bet, as it looks to me like you'd always have some first generation 'seed' in there. I just couldn't bring myself not to pitch ready and waiting yeast...I like to yeast nuke my wort and stand back and watch!

i guess that's the other thing w/ me. i never know what i'm going to brew until i get my grains/hops. so saving yeast would kind of commit me to brewing certain things.
i understand everyone pro's for harvesting yeast. maybe i'm a little lazy too????

good tips and ideas if someone wanted to do it though. thanks for the feedback.

Until I have a designated "brewery" set up in my house, I'm not going to save yeast either.
I'm not really into brewing to "save money" so I usually buy yeast. The only time I reuse it is when I pitch over a cake.
I just worry too much about contamination, and would rather let a professional handle my yeast.

Mindflux said:

IWhat I'd like to do is start making slants using gelatin or agar.

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OK, you got me on this one. Why the gelatin? How do you use it in your slants?

ORRELSE said:

Until I have a designated "brewery" set up in my house, I'm not going to save yeast either.
I'm not really into brewing to "save money" so I usually buy yeast. The only time I reuse it is when I pitch over a cake.
I just worry too much about contamination, and would rather let a professional handle my yeast.

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Two points here:

1) It's not really about saving money, but about making SWMBO think that you're saving money. I can honestly say "Look dear...I have 4 batches of yeast here that I don't have to pay for, and I could potentially get another 16 batches out of those...I've just saved $126!"

2) It's just one more cool thing to play with to pass the time in between brew days.

El Pistolero said:

...I've just saved $126!"

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She: That means I can go spend some, right?

He: DOH!!!!

Savings is a plus, for sure! Now that I've been buying grain in bulk, I go to the LHBS less often. It's about $7 for a vail of White Labs yeast, it's 36 miles round trip, which equates to about one gallon a gas at $2.13/gal., plus $1.00 in expressway tolls. So, now my vial has gone up to $10.13. And I'm not factoring in my time. I usually go for three batches out of each vial, so that's cutting my cost to $3.38!

In reality, the cost is secondary to the 'fun' factor, IMO. It's easy to do, so long as you're sanitation routine is good.

Sudster said:

OK, you got me on this one. Why the gelatin? How do you use it in your slants?

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gelatin or agar is a growth medium for the yeast. that with a little bit of yeast nutrient and DME.

basically you boil a cup of water w/ some dme and yeast nutrient.. add some gelatin as it cools and pitch into your test tubes. maybe 1/4 to 1/3 full.

you take your test tubes and autoclave/pressure cook them to sterility.. then you innoculate the congealed agar or gelatin with a 1st generation yeast (right out of a yeast packet). it would be a good idea to do 3 test tubes per yeast strain just in case you end up with a bad one..

then you leave these out to grow until you see colonies form..

they are now freezeable for up to a year (some folks add some glycol to help freezing).

I'm just now getting into it myself, but that's the gist of it.

Ultimatately the objective is to have enough yeast slants on hand to be able to pull out a vial, scrape out some yeast and toss it in a small 200ml starter and step it up to 1000ml and pitch it.

Imagine having 30 strains of yeast in your freezer at your disposal.

yessh i went overboard with my description.. you just asked why gelatin. perhaps you already do slants using agar.

Great information in this thread. Thanks everyone!

I'm looking into saving and reusing yeast, too. After racking my ESB to the secondary a while back, I wasn't sure what to do with it (ie:washing) so I dumped it( the yeast cake) into sanitized pint canning jars. Is this still salvageable? It's been in the fridge for about....2-3 weeks.

Also, does eveyone save yeast mostly from the primary or secondary? I've read pro/cons on both.

Mindflux said:

gelatin or agar is a growth medium for the yeast. that with a little bit of yeast nutrient and DME.

basically you boil a cup of water w/ some dme and yeast nutrient.. add some gelatin as it cools and pitch into your test tubes. maybe 1/4 to 1/3 full.

you take your test tubes and autoclave/pressure cook them to sterility.. then you innoculate the congealed agar or gelatin with a 1st generation yeast (right out of a yeast packet). it would be a good idea to do 3 test tubes per yeast strain just in case you end up with a bad one..

then you leave these out to grow until you see colonies form..

they are now freezeable for up to a year (some folks add some glycol to help freezing).

I'm just now getting into it myself, but that's the gist of it.

Ultimatately the objective is to have enough yeast slants on hand to be able to pull out a vial, scrape out some yeast and toss it in a small 200ml starter and step it up to 1000ml and pitch it.

Imagine having 30 strains of yeast in your freezer at your disposal.

yessh i went overboard with my description.. you just asked why gelatin. perhaps you already do slants using agar.

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Well, I have 26 yeast slants, is that close enough?
Slants are very easy and you can repitch the slurry from that and really see cost savings!!
As for repitching, I dont wash the yeast, seems to me another chance to pick up a contamination. I repitch up to 5-6 times, without washing and then make up another starter.Also, I don't feel like I have to commit to anything when I repitch, I just have a 2-3 batch lineup and try to make the second and third batch brews that I can reuse that yeast in. For example, if I make a bitter, then I follow up with an IPA or a Porter, so it's not really an issue.

BitterRat said:

Well, I have 26 yeast slants, is that close enough?
Slants are very easy and you can repitch the slurry from that and really see cost savings!!
As for repitching, I dont wash the yeast, seems to me another chance to pick up a contamination. I repitch up to 5-6 times, without washing and then make up another starter.Also, I don't feel like I have to commit to anything when I repitch, I just have a 2-3 batch lineup and try to make the second and third batch brews that I can reuse that yeast in. For example, if I make a bitter, then I follow up with an IPA or a Porter, so it's not really an issue.

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I wash to get all the trub/hop trash off of the yeast. If I didn't I'd be adding bitterness to my next batch.

homebrewer_99 said:

I wash to get all the trub/hop trash off of the yeast. If I didn't I'd be adding bitterness to my next batch.

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I have not noticed this extra bitterness!!
But, I do not use pellet hops, so there is no "hop trash" to be concerned with. But you could over chill your beer, then let it stand for a couple hours, rack to your primary off the trub and hop trash, then pitch your yeast. You then have left most of that behind and can have a clean ferment.

BitterRat said:

I have not noticed this extra bitterness!!
But, I do not use pellet hops, so there is no "hop trash" to be concerned with. But you could over chill your beer, then let it stand for a couple hours, rack to your primary off the trub and hop trash, then pitch your yeast. You then have left most of that behind and can have a clean ferment.

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That's true...about the pellets, I mean.

Mindflux said:

gelatin or agar is a growth medium for the yeast. that with a little bit of yeast nutrient and DME.

basically you boil a cup of water w/ some dme and yeast nutrient.. add some gelatin as it cools and pitch into your test tubes. maybe 1/4 to 1/3 full.

you take your test tubes and autoclave/pressure cook them to sterility.. then you innoculate the congealed agar or gelatin with a 1st generation yeast (right out of a yeast packet). it would be a good idea to do 3 test tubes per yeast strain just in case you end up with a bad one..

then you leave these out to grow until you see colonies form..

they are now freezeable for up to a year (some folks add some glycol to help freezing).

I'm just now getting into it myself, but that's the gist of it.

Ultimatately the objective is to have enough yeast slants on hand to be able to pull out a vial, scrape out some yeast and toss it in a small 200ml starter and step it up to 1000ml and pitch it.

Imagine having 30 strains of yeast in your freezer at your disposal.

yessh i went overboard with my description.. you just asked why gelatin. perhaps you already do slants using agar.

Click to expand...

I am interested in this method because i would like to save yeast for awhile. Do you have a webpage that gives more detailed information?