First time reusing yeast

[SomeDick]

Hello, I'm looking for some advice on how to reuse the yeast from my beer currently in my fermenter. I'm brewing a Belgian Pale ale using the Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes. I somewhat understand the yeast washing process but I'm more curious about what kind of beer I should/ could make with the reused yeast. Does it have to be another Belgian pale ale? If anyone has some advice or a recipe I should go with that would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[porterpounder]

You can make any Belgian style you like. Pale ale, Belgian IPA, Saison, Belgian winter beer, all do well with that yeast. It's the Achouffe strain. You don't even have to perform the washing procedure. Syphon off most of your beer, clean and sanitize a mason jar and just dump the yeast in there until you're ready to re-use. Some folks just add the new wort ready to go right onto the yeast cake in the fermenter with good result. The mason jar allow you to control your pitch-rate better.

 

[HausBrauerei_Harvey]

the yeast will not change, so anything belgian you would make with WY3522 is a go. general rule of thumb is not to go from a really strongly flavored beer to a really light one with your slurry. i.e. its not recommended to use slurry from a Rauchbeir on a pilsner for the next batch, as you'll likely get a bit of smoke flavor transferring with the slurry.

Be sure and use a pitching from slurry calculator so you dont overpitch, you probably have enough yeast for 20 gallons in that slurry volume. I think beersmith has one built in but i use mr. malty all the time. Also I wouldn't bother 'washing' the yeast, i've been just dumping into sanitized mason jars with a bit of beer from the fermentor for a few years now with great results.

 

[SomeDick]

Awesome news! Just gotta find a recipe now. I'm thinking about going with a Saison. Thank you.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

Skip the washing.
Swirl up the yeast cake
Dump into a sterilized mason jar.
Next brew day just swirl it around to mix it back up and dump in your fermenter.Ive never made a starter and use around 3/4 of a mason jar for 5 gallons..Probably 3 times what the calculators recommend without issue.Plenty of talk about how hard it is to overpitch,under pitching is the main concern and this covers your bases.Has never let me down and almost always use reused yeast.

 

[SomeDick]

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1474043110.992698.jpg so, I'm not quite sure how much of the 1 liter of slurry I have for the beer listed above. Could someone possibly explain the math behind figuring out ML of yeast needed for that batch?

 

[EDF713]

so, I'm not quite sure how much of the 1 liter of slurry I have for the beer listed above. Could someone possibly explain the math behind figuring out ML of yeast needed for that batch?

The calculator assumes 1 billion yeast cells per milliliter, and has calculated you need 176 billion based on OG and pitch rate. The calculator defaults to 1 liter of slurry, here you would enter how much slurry you have (or reduce to how much you want to pitch). You can adjust the amount of slurry pitched to get in the ballpark Cells Available compared to the Target Pitch Rate. In theory it's telling you that .176 liters of slurry will be enough. When I've harvested from 5 gallon batches, I could get 2-4 pint mason jars just by pouring (if I scooped more out I could get more, but didn't need it). If you gather 1 liter from your 5 gallon batch it will be way more than you need, so you can save what you don't repitch.

I recommend you look at the Mr. Malty calculator also - http://mrmalty.com/. It can account for viability of your slurry if you store the slurry between packaging and pitching.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

The calculator estimates have been know to be off by more than a million cells..Your best bet and common practice is to begin counting the yeast.This way you can get EXACTLY 176 Billion cells