Harvesting WLP001 from secondary...bad idea?

[Lumberg1]

So a few weeks ago I racked a Rye IPA to seconday and had every intention of harvesting the yeast. Well, as I was moving the carboy into the closet my brother-in-law, trying to help out, rinsed out and started cleaning the primary not knowing that I was going to save that yeast. I was too late to save it.

So my question is, when I bottle it could I just use that yeast? Or will there not be enough?

 

[bullinachinashop]

I wouldn't use yeast from a secondary. It may concentrate the less flocculant in the strain.

 

[dcott]

Also, I seem to remember reading somewhere (I think in the Homebrewer's Answer Book by Ashton Lewis) that the yeast cake in the secondary, since it isn't as active and there is a far greater proportion of spent cells, can actually be a greater breeding ground for nasties once exposed to air (i.e. after racking). I believe it's when he discusses the benefits of a conical vs. secondary fermenter.

 

[smokinghole]

Primary in a bucket and top crop baby.

 

[Calder]

Use it. Just don't get in the habit of doing it. The primary had the larger proportion of 'good' yeast (the ones that did their job and dropped out), while the secondary has the ones that didn't.

When you re-use the yeast, they will reproduce, and by selecting the yeast in the secondary, they will have a greater chance of producing yeast similar to them selves as opposed to the ones that were in the primary. They all had the same parentage, so can still produce good yeast.

Continually using secondary yeast will trend to result is a yeast with different characteristics to the original, but one generation should not be a problem.

 

[bovineblitz]

Use it. Just don't get in the habit of doing it. The primary had the larger proportion of 'good' yeast (the ones that did their job and dropped out), while the secondary has the ones that didn't.

When you re-use the yeast, they will reproduce, and by selecting the yeast in the secondary, they will have a greater chance of producing yeast similar to them selves as opposed to the ones that were in the primary. They all had the same parentage, so can still produce good yeast.

Continually using secondary yeast will trend to result is a yeast with different characteristics to the original, but one generation should not be a problem.

Agree. Doing it once will give you a good beer. Doing it repeatedly isn't wise... don't plan on it for the future as it's not ideal, but if it's what you have to do for now, it'll work just fine.

 

[emjay]

The yeast in the secondary may be less flocculant but that also generally means it's higher attenuating. This is why if you're going to cold crash a starter or otherwise let it settle, it's really important to give it a bit of time to let the more highly attenuating yeast flocculate. There may be other reasons why a secondary is not ideal to transfer from, but yeast that doesn't work as well (as some people are saying) is not really one of them. Neither works objectively better than the other, they just work differently and you'll be artificially selecting for specific traits, although I'd wager that the primary has a better overall mix. If you harvest from a secondary, at the very least you can expect increasingly cloudly beer with each generation as you continually eliminate the more flocculant yeasties from the gene pool.

In theory, harvesting from the primary might, at worst, produce yeast that takes a bit longer to reach terminal gravity, but if you let it sit in the primary long enough, it's unlikely to become a very noticeable issue for the 5 generations or so that you can realistically expect to keep using the yeast for, and conversely, racking to secondary as soon as possible will create less noticeable problems with flocculation, but there are myriad other reasons NOT to rack to secondary so quickly if you care about how that particular batch of beer is going to turn out. So that advantage alone is reason enough to harvest from primary, and in fact it's just one more reason not to use a secondary at all.