Another yeast washing question

[kcstrom]

I'm still pretty new to brewing, but I have been pretty excited about washing my yeast and reusing them.

Background:
I forgot to prepare to wash yeast as described at https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/yeast-washing-illustrated-41768/. I also made the wife and I late to somewhere by brewing that day. So I was in a hurry to get the wort to fermenting and leave.

Do to that, I poured a gallon or so of the boiled water I had into the carboy to cover the yeast. The next day I followed the directions from the link above. However, I don't have a massive jar and didn't want to boil water again, so I used a 3qt apple juice container (left over and cleaned from making Apfelwein) and sanitized it and the pint jars with Star-san. The only difference is that I dumped some of the water off the top of the yeast cake since it had settled the whole night before.

I was planning on brewing the weekend before this last one. So I took one of my pint jars of washed yeast and made a starter with the 1/2 cup DME and 2 cups of water method. I put it in the apple juice container (above and resanitized with Star-san), shook it up real good, and covered with a new piece of tin foil. If fermented over the course of two days. On the third day I realized I wasn't going to be able to brew. So I put it in the fridge.

I once again thought I was going to be able to brew this last weekend, and had a similar situation again. I decanted some of the liquid on the top of the yeast in the bottle and did the 1/2 cup DME - 2 cups of water thing and let it ferment for a couple of days.

Questions:
1. Can I put this starter in the fridge and build it up again before I [attempt to] brew again, or should I just throw it out and start over?

2. Was it okay to leave the yeast covered in boiled (and cooled back down to room temperature) water overnight instead of using water that has been refrigerated?

Thanks.

kcstrom

 

[Yankeehillbrewer]

If you have built it up twice already I would just take it out of the fridge, decant most of the liquid, give it a stir and pitch. You might have a bit of lag time, but you should have a plenty high cell count.I wouldn't build it up again. I'm pretty sure you were ok to leave it sitting overnight, I've read you can leave out for a number of days.

 

[mosquitocontrol]

I too would like to get into using liquid yeast and would like to use yeast washing to save some $. I bought liquid yeast for my pumpkin ale then realized it will probably be damn hard to separate it out with all the extra pumpkin that falls out on the bottom of the primary.

Has anyone been able to successfully yeast wash after a pumpkin ale?

If it turns out that some of the pumpkin carries over into the seed jars would the pumpkin make it go bad over time? I.E. Would I be fine so long as I just used for furture pumpkin ales only?

 

[kcstrom]

Hi mosquitocontrol,

You might want to create a new thread with a descriptive title so folks who are knowledgeable/interested will

kcstrom

 

[kcstrom]

I pitched this yeast into my first all-grain batch (which had terrible efficiency BTW - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/terrible-efficiency-98353/ ) and about 20 hours later, it is going nuts! There areall kind of particles rising and sinking in the better bottle. It is really amazing!

Now I won't know for another 6 weeks if the yeast got infected during my washing of it and building a starter, but it's at least reproducing like crazy!

kcstrom