24 hours later, is this right?

[Likefully]

I added water to the fermenter, mixed it up and poured it into 2 jars. Here is one of them 24 hours later. Is it normal for the yeast to take so long to settle? The beer was a stout, the yeast is Notties which I harvested from one of my own beers. The jar was left out the fridge (space is limited)


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[brdb]

Looks like you got a lot of trub at the bottom with some yeast on top. Next time, instead of pouring straight from the fermenter to your jars, try pouring from the fermenter into a bigger jar, let that jar settle for ~15 minutes, then pour from that jar into your smaller jars and stick in fridge. You should definitely store yeast in the fridge.

 

[Jogurt]

Yep, the bottom layer is trub (too much, for the record). The lightest layer is settled yeast. The yellow layer is a mix of beer and unsettled yeast and the topmost layer is the leftover beer.

 

[catdaddy66]

Looks like you got a lot of trub at the bottom with some yeast on top. Next time, instead of pouring straight from the fermenter to your jars, try pouring from the fermenter into a bigger jar, let that jar settle for ~15 minutes, then pour from that jar into your smaller jars and stick in fridge. You should definitely store yeast in the fridge.

This is exactly the same as my method.


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[Likefully]

Thanks. I have been adding water to the fermenter, then letting it sit over night before transferring....I now understand why I have struggled so much to keep the trub out.

Anyways - what impact will about 50ml (maybe more) of trub have on a ferment? Because I either lose 50ml (maybe more) of yeast or have 50ml of trub with the yeast when I pitch it. The way I see it, its not really worth the hassle to try get all the trub out.

 

[catdaddy66]

Should not have any measurable impact at all. Some trub will always get into the slurry but it's all good!


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[masonsjax]

Why are you adding water to the fermentor?

 

[catdaddy66]

Why are you adding water to the fermentor?

I think he's referring to the process of adding sterile water to the yeast cake after racking/bottling, then harvesting the solution to retrieve viable yeast. I may be wrong though.


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[flars]

Do you have room in the frig for a pint jar? Decant the beer and water mixture that is in the pictured jar. Swirl up the remainder of the contents to get the settled yeast into suspension. Let it sit for a half hour to an hour. Pour off the yeast solution into a pint jar when you see a dense layer of trub beginning to form at the bottom.
You will not get all the yeast with this method. The amount of yeast will be enough to make a single step starter for most mid gravity brews.
If this pour does not fill the pint jar completely, without taking trub, top off with beer. The top off beer is a quick and already sanitized.

 

[masonsjax]

I think he's referring to the process of adding sterile water to the yeast cake after racking/bottling, then harvesting the solution to retrieve viable yeast. I may be wrong though.


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That's what I figured, but adding water is a pointless exercise that can be detrimental to yeast health. Evidence also shows that trub layers contain as much viable yeast as other layers and efforts to decant off of it have results opposite of what's intended. The best method of harvesting yeast (short of freezing/slanting/acid wash) is to swirl up a slurry using some of the remaining beer from the batch and put it in a sanitized jar in the fridge.

 

[Likefully]

That's what I figured, but adding water is a pointless exercise that can be detrimental to yeast health. Evidence also shows that trub layers contain as much viable yeast as other layers and efforts to decant off of it have results opposite of what's intended. The best method of harvesting yeast (short of freezing/slanting/acid wash) is to swirl up a slurry using some of the remaining beer from the batch and put it in a sanitized jar in the fridge.

That sounds like a loss less work than what I have been doing and also makes sense!

Previous posts were spot on as to why I added the water.