Evan!
Well-Known Member
...thanks in large part to Bernie Brewer and his yeast washing sticky. It's funny how you can do something wrong a few times, end up with crappy results, and just give up and dismiss the practice as rubbish. That's what I did with yeast washing. I thought I had the practice down, I read tutorials several times, but every time I did it, the result was a sub-par batch of beer. Part of this was not doing the process correctly; the other part was laziness---leaving yeast cakes sitting alone in primaries post-rack for a week or more, for example.
So earlier this year, I decided that I was going to commit myself to learning this craft and keeping up a solid yeast farm. My first step was to dump all my jars of slurry down the drain and start from scratch. This was a good thing, as I had no guarantees on the quality of those jars.
Next, I read Bernie's instructions a couple times, and went to work. I washed them correctly this time---instead of saving the slurry, I saved the actual cloudy liquid. Duh. I also got out the label maker and labeled each jar, so there'd be no confusion. That was that---I wasn't convinced until just a few minutes ago, though...
On friday, I made a starter from one of the jars of harvested Forbidden Fruit, and it was chugging along several hours later. Good sign, but not exactly a slam dunk yet. Saturday, I brewed a weizen and pitched the starter into it. Had a short lag, and was chugging away all day yesterday.
Then today...I went home for a jog at lunch and saw that the airlock had stopped bubbling and the krausen had fallen. So I took a sample and it was down to 1.013 from 1.051. Nice. But it wasn't until I tasted the sample that I was sure of my success. Damn, damn fine beer. No off-flavors, very clean and fruity. This is exciting...by getting this technique down, I have slashed my operating costs and will now almost certainly use liquid yeast more often.
So here's a big thanks to BB. I wish it hadn't taken me 70 batches to learn how to do this correctly. Hey, all you n00bs: do yourself a favor and learn how to properly harvest/wash your liquid yeast!
So earlier this year, I decided that I was going to commit myself to learning this craft and keeping up a solid yeast farm. My first step was to dump all my jars of slurry down the drain and start from scratch. This was a good thing, as I had no guarantees on the quality of those jars.
Next, I read Bernie's instructions a couple times, and went to work. I washed them correctly this time---instead of saving the slurry, I saved the actual cloudy liquid. Duh. I also got out the label maker and labeled each jar, so there'd be no confusion. That was that---I wasn't convinced until just a few minutes ago, though...
On friday, I made a starter from one of the jars of harvested Forbidden Fruit, and it was chugging along several hours later. Good sign, but not exactly a slam dunk yet. Saturday, I brewed a weizen and pitched the starter into it. Had a short lag, and was chugging away all day yesterday.
Then today...I went home for a jog at lunch and saw that the airlock had stopped bubbling and the krausen had fallen. So I took a sample and it was down to 1.013 from 1.051. Nice. But it wasn't until I tasted the sample that I was sure of my success. Damn, damn fine beer. No off-flavors, very clean and fruity. This is exciting...by getting this technique down, I have slashed my operating costs and will now almost certainly use liquid yeast more often.
So here's a big thanks to BB. I wish it hadn't taken me 70 batches to learn how to do this correctly. Hey, all you n00bs: do yourself a favor and learn how to properly harvest/wash your liquid yeast!