Anyone her washed and stored yeast in saline solution

[Tropheus]

I read this article a few months ago about storing yeast in a saline solution:

https://eurekabrewing.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/yeast-banking-3-isotonic-sodium-chloride/
After reading I had to give it a try, so I washed and banked some WLP001 and some WLP002 in a saline solution that I made from boiled RO water. I Dissolved 9 g of sodium chloride (a.k.a sea salt) in 1 L of boiled RO water.

I stored this for 3 months at 4c and made 2 starters to see if the yeast was okay....

Both yeasts took a few hours longer than normal to start but when they did start they took off really well and created what looks to be healthy yeast as I would normally expect. I could not detect any off flavours tasting the starter liquid so they both went into 2 newly brewed worts......

Has anyone here tried this method and been successful / unsuccessful? I would really value thoughts or pros and cons of this method of storing yeast.

 

[soccerdad]

I did try it, but ended up holding it too long in the fridge. Tossed it. Will try again. The yeast had no undue odor or appearance but I decided not to take a chance. These days I am more likely to brew 3 or 4 times in a row with yeast, then slurry.

 

[Tropheus]

Cheers,

I only brew 10 - 12 batches per year, so my goal is to try and find an easy way to store yeast for up to 6 months. I do not want to go to the trouble of slants, and storing yeast on slurry for that period of time is most likely a no no...

 

[soccerdad]

Up to 6 months with saline on top should work fine.

 

[McMullan]

I'd say beer is the best medium for short to medium term storage. My view is yeast need more than water, isotonic or not. Brewer's yeast are known to survive in bottled beers for decades and longer. A common theme across the most successful storage methods is low population density in small (ml) volumes.

 

[Tropheus]

Good point

 

[soccerdad]

I think the idea with saline was to be comfortable for 2 to 3 times as long. For comfortable 4 months storing under beer? Stretch to 8 or 12 and still be comfortable.

 

[McMullan]

At the end of the day, they produced the beer. The nutritious sweet wort provides what seems to be a perfect environment for brewer's yeast to prosper. Their lives aren't misgoverned by capitalism so they have the 'sense' to stop before trashing their environment. I suspect beer is more like their natural habitat than water, too. A nice acidic oak bark, for example.

Edit: honestly, I'm not taking the p*ss. Admittedly my home bar is called The Green Man, but that doesn't have any effect on documented yeast behaviour