Harvesting Yeast From Secondary

[Beerrific]

I am bottling my Kölsch today and was wondering if I could grab some of the yeast that is in there. I know people have said that this is not the best thing to do, but has anyone done it successfully? I didn't remember to when I transfered this to the secondary, I hate to have all this yeast go to waste.

Thanks

 

[The Pol]

You can do it, it will be older yeast and it will be the least flocculent, but you can do it the same as primary yeast. It will be cleaner at least...

 

[uuurang]

Tried that once with Am. ale II 1272. Used the secondary yeast from Irish red. I dumped an old ale on it O.G 1.082. Was worried it wouldn't work cuz there wasn't much slurry and it was a high gravity. Reminded myself to RDWHAHB.
Fermented out quickly and furiously. In less than a week it went from 1.082 to 1.020...I think thats about were a old ale should finish up.
Just remembered that only aeration i did was to slosh the wort around for awhile. I got O2 system now and that seems to make a big difference, so I think the secondary yeast will get job done.

 

[ajf]

I've never done it from the secondary, but I have done it from the bottle on a few occasions without any problems.

-a.

 

[5gBrewer]

I've only ever done this with yeast from a PRIMARY, and it worked very well.

5gB

 

[stevenb]

I've done ale yeast from a secondary a couple times (only because I forgot to take from the primary) and it worked fine. I think I made a starter up though because there wasn't as much.

 

[.code.decode.]

apologies if this has already been covered on this board, is there a preferred method for saving yeast from the primary/secondary? can you just scoop it out of there and into a jar? put some water with it, then into the fridge? i'd like to re-use the yeast out of my primary this coming week.

 

[Bobby_M]

There are a lot more experienced folks around here that will chime in, but IMHO the most important thing is sanitation. Be absolutely sure your collection vessel is clean and I mean clean and sanitized or even sterile. It would be good to heat sterilize by boiling or heating in the oven. I've collected a good 10oz of slurry from primary into beer bottles. A little plastic wrap held on with a rubberband ensures you don't have a grenade in case there were a few fermentables left. When transfering out of this bottle, Papazian even suggests swabbing the lip of the bottle with alcohol and flaming it with a lighter to make sure you don't pour it out through bacteria.

The way I'd collect is to stop your siphon just as you're getting to the last bit of wort. Swirl the fermenter to suspend some yeast and then let the siphon continue into your collection vessel. Some people add sterile water into the primary to help dislodge yeast without wasting some wort but I always make sure I have about 5.25 gallons in primary.