how many times can i repitch yeast

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fluketamer

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sorry everyone im too lazy to search. what's the consensus on the number of times i can repitch my slurry from a previous batch before starting over. i have been doing 3 pitches on one dry yeast pack before starting fresh. i know the mantra of low to high gravity, light to dark when repitching but does anyone have experience with repitching five or six times?

thanks
 
sorry everyone im too lazy to search. what's the consensus on the number of times i can repitch my slurry from a previous batch before starting over. i have been doing 3 pitches on one dry yeast pack before starting fresh. i know the mantra of low to high gravity, light to dark when repitching but does anyone have experience with repitching five or six times?

thanks
From a homebrewer’s perspective, as long as you’re pitching into medium-strength, medium-color, non-dry-hopped worts, indefinitely. At some point you may end up with a substandard beer or an infection, at which point you would want to start over.

If you want to avoid any risk of a bad batch, the conservative approach would be 5-10 cycles. Someone may jump in now and tell you that there’s X brewery in Y-erhampton that hasn’t gone back to stored yeast in 113 years, and that besides the yeast gets better each and every time. I do not think this is a mainstream view.

Remember that while dry yeast doesn’t require much in the way of nutrients or oxygenation, once you’re using the farmed yeast it is, for all intents and purposes, liquid yeast and you need to treat it as such.
 
I go anywhere from 3 to 5. Not sure how true it is, but I've heard that the yeast starts to mutate from its original strain and go rogue. Not that I'm afraid of infection, weird flavors, or dead yeast. I just want to keep the original strain.
 
Most I've done is 4. I would gather and bottle some for later use. Feed her a little and put her in the fridge about 1/2 yeast cake 1/2 beer. General I did this with saison yeast or an ipa that I dry hopped in keg. I'm sure if you let's say a brown ale you make frequently you could do it more than I have just make sure everything is very clean and sanity.
 
What really matters at the homebrew scale is the time between batches. If you harvest a healthy yeast and it sits in the fridge for 2 months before the next batch, you'll have mutations and issues arise. Pro brewers can (sometimes) daisy chain yeast from batch to batch with minimal downtime, which is best for the health of the yeast.

That said, many brewers say the yeast is best on the 4-7th pitch, getting better then worse afterwards. That magical 5th pitch is often the best.
 
No practical idea but from my lab experience with passaging cells (bacteria and yeast) after about 10 passages the cells tend to change genetics and are different than the initial cell line. Could be a good thing or a bad thing.
 
Some strains are more reliable/bulletproof than others. Of course your yeast handling and sanitation methods are going to be a factor. You can extend your yeast by Saving a couple quarts of slurry from the first batch and then pitch about half of each quart into the next batch. Another method is to make a starter with DME and pitch half and save half. Just keep doing that and you are always saving the starter. Having said all that, I've turned into a somewhat lazy brewer and although I'm also a cheapskate, I don't like wasting time and ingredients to produce questionable brews. So I go about 4-5 brews in a row with the same yeast and then dump it. Right now I'm on brew #5 with BRY-97 and its been very reliable. Other reliable yeasts for me with many uses have been SF lager yeast, some of the Saison blends (if they drift a little its OK, more "character") Abbey ale yeast, and the good old Chico strain.
 
I don't repitch from brew slurry, but make overbuilt starters, saving about 100b, pitching about 200b, using this HomeBrewDad Yeast calculator. Now, sanitation be ultra-important. And because I'll go 6-15 months before using a saved overbuild, making a starter is also important. The older saves take longer to get going again on the starter, but brewing with the result goes as usual. After about 5-8 overbuilds one of two things happens (to me) - (a) I open the saved mason jar of yeast and something smells....off, not yeasty, maybe sour or like the underside of a yak roadkilled and left on the side of a highway in the hot summer Texas sun; or (ii) someone who shall remain nameless inadvertently tosses out "some old random jar of gunk" she finds in her way in the refrigerator. I'll admit, (ii) only happened once. Things are labelled now. And kept out of someone's refrigerator and kept in mine. All mine. No touchy.
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i am reading through thanks theres a lot of good stuff here i also saw below the repitching limit thread which i m skimming through. theres other issues with searching on this site unfortunately. but i guess what i could of said instead of too lazy to search is "i am interested in what others currently do" which i think i hinted at at the end of my post .

the problem i have with searching is say a 27 page thread comes up on the search. this site has been around so long and homebrewing has changed so dramatically really exponentially i think that the thread could literally be 10 years old. it also can be years in duration from first to last post and the info can and often does change from page 1 to page 27. i dont have the time to waste on a rabbit hole thread when reading this thread has already convinced me to increase my repitch from 3 which was my limit out of fear not evidence to at least 5 and now maybe 6 to see if 5 is the magic generation"

i have switched over my pipeline to no boil prehopped canned kits after scoring 32 lbs of hopped malt extract with extra hops for dry hopping for 80$ with shipping . i still cant believe that price. if i can extend my yeast banking practices i may be able to avoid schlepping to my lhbs or paying exorbitant shipping prices on yeast for the next year or so.

again thanks this site is still the best homebrew site online
 
btw my current practice has been to pitch a dry pack 11g of say diamond in 2.25 gallons of lager figuring this would be like two packs in a 5 gallon batch which i think palmer recommended a million years ago for lagers. instead of pitching 1 pack like an ale yeast. consensus has likely changed on this like everything else. i dont rehydrate. dry yeast. i have before and dont notice a difference.

then i basically use that as my starter. after fermentation i take 1 quart of the slurry and let it settle for 1 to two weeks under beer in the fridge. i decant the beer and take the creamy thick layer above the debris at the bottom and pitch that at about a rate of 1 pint per 5 gallons

using my yeast cell calculator ( in my head) i figure that comes out to about 200 billion cell pitch which i think is what is recommended on avg?
in any case its been working off and on for 20 years with good results and currently consistently since December
 
Well, unlimited, theoretically, but it's one of those things where you have to decide how much of a hobby within a hobby you want out of it. Your yeast may a) mutate b) be contaminated c) need additional zinc (around gen 6-12). You can somewhat take care of "b" with an acid wash, though some wild yeast may be resistant. You can take care of "c" by -- surprise -- adding *the correct amount of* zinc to your wort; you need really really little of it, but you need it. You can probably take care of "a" by re-growing the colony from a single unmutated cell, but I've never done that, because that's where I drew the line with the hobby-within-hobby business.

I'd say forget yeast calculators because they don't know how many cells per mL your slurry has and are effectively calculating guess in => guess out. If using your process your lager completes fermentation in 7-10 days you pitched enough, otherwise you underpitched and you need to pitch more next time. The exception is if you're on the nth generation and have *not* added zinc, your fermentation may be sluggish or stall due to a lack of zinc instead of cells. If you warm-pitch, the pitch cell count isn't quite as critical as with cold-pitching.
 
... theres other issues with searching on this site unfortunately. but i guess what i could of said instead of too lazy to search is "i am interested in what others currently do" which i think i hinted at at the end of my post .

the problem i have with searching is say a 27 page thread comes up on the search. this site has been around so long and homebrewing has changed so dramatically really exponentially i think that the thread could literally be 10 years old...
Pro tip: when searching homebrew stuff and things on this site, use Google and commands instead of this, or any forum's search function. site: and after: commands are invaluable.

If you want to search this site for repitching threads that are three years old at their oldest, try this in the Google machine:

repitch site:homebrewtalk.com after:2020-06-16
 
I also do overbuild starters,and keep them in 250 ml Erlenmeyer flasks. They contain~30 mil cells/ml counted awhile ago ,but have used this SOP and the beers are consistent and mostly very good.
Home brew dad's calculator lets you pick the date or input the cells /ml , so it gives me the amount of starter i need to pitch the first gen and save the 250 ml. Now you know how many cells to pitch for that wort. If you do a second step with 20 liters as the volume and off stir plate you are basically brewing a beer and will get the cell count of that yeast cake. If you divide the cells made in second step by the cells needed it will tell you how much of that cake needs to be repitched. I will repitch most yeasts 2-4 times ,not from saved slurry but from subsequent fermentations, and I'm usually pitching on wort the same day the beer is packaged. Mostly I'm changing styles and want another yeast and I also have found that the saved starters take off sooner with only a 6 month break.
 
fwiw, I also use the Homebrew Dad yeast propagation calculator to crank out yeast to create two pitches for the next brew (two carboys per batch) plus a pitch-sized over-build for the fridge. I note the cell count that the calculator predicts plus the date on the stored mason jar.

When I go to do the next generation cycle for that yeast strain I use the calculator to determine the viable cell count of the saved yeast, and make whatever adjustments are needed to theoretically produce three pitches again. Repeat for as long as a year before starting over again...

Cheers!
 
when you say harvest and repitch do you mean washing and rebiulding starters etc or just repitching slurry ?

20 to 25 times sounds extreme.
 
I just repitched into my dirty hefe keg...6th time now without a cleanout or anything. Just pop the lid and dump fresh wort. Will see how it turns out.
How big do you reckon that yeast/trub cake is by now?
I guess there hasn't been much yeast growth after the 2nd or 3rd batch, but the trub keeps piling up.
 
All my wort is screened before it goes into the fermenter or keg. Minimal trub. I blow a lot of the yeast cake out into mason jars to save for a new batch and pitch onto what remains in the keg.

The yeast should continue to grow each time.
 
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odie how do you screen the wort. when i do biab i have a lkot of trub and hop material in the wort because i also dont use hop spider during boil. i once tried to filter my wort through a biab bag and i ended up with a bag full of wort and me trying to squeeze the liquid out of it by hand - dont do that. although the beer came out good lol
 
Until....

The genetic drift and collection methods start producing a beer different than you wanted.

The bacterial contamination builds to a point where you don't the like the beer its making.
generation 5 was guzzled by my friends.

we will see about gen 6...

and I got earlier generation yeast cake saved.

and a fresh yeast packet when it's time to throw in the towel
 
Generation 6 will be different...doing it "open" style like the olde days. At least until the krausen falls, then close the keg up.

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Until....

The genetic drift and collection methods start producing a beer different than you wanted.

The bacterial contamination builds to a point where you don't the like the beer its making.
We see people anecdotally report that their beer "got better for x generations and then started to get worse after y generations." I sometimes wonder if this really has very little to do with mutation/selection and is mostly explained by progressively larger pitches eventually followed by inevitable contamination.

I mean, yeah every living thing is always mutating and everybody's sanitation is beyond reproach, but still...
 
We see people anecdotally report that their beer "got better for x generations and then started to get worse after y generations." I sometimes wonder if this really has very little to do with mutation/selection and is mostly explained by progressively larger pitches eventually followed by inevitable contamination.

I mean, yeah every living thing is always mutating and everybody's sanitation is beyond reproach, but still...
It's hard to say. Some smaller breweries I'm friendly with are pitching measured out slurries with the viable cell density counted and even they are preferring 3-6 generation batches. On the homebrew level I would agree that progressive higher cell counts probably account for something.
 
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thanks for the replies this is turning into another good thread i love this site.
mac im right there with you id be staring at the kreusen too. im embarrassed to admit ive tasted kreusen more than once it looks so appealing... dont do that it doesnt taste good. mostly achingly bitter. lol
im up to pitch three on two of my current brews im planning to go to 5 or 6 with the yeast. now after reading this thread. i always was to afraid to repitch more than 3 times before.

i also use the tea strainers and a lot gets through and my cakes have a lot of hop in them thats why im looking into a better wort filtering method

thanks again everyone
 
I repitch until the refrigerated yeast fails the sniff test; like for socks or t-shirts (not underwear, NEVER underwear!!).

I take a pack of yeast, make a starter, pitch most and keep some for the next starter, repeat. At some point, it smells off, goes into the mulch bin, and I start over.
 
It depends on the type of yeast, the health of the previous batch and the storage time. Saison dry yeast that has not been kept for more than a week has worked best for me (zero wasting batch), but I do not exceed 5 - 6 generations, although I have a feeling that this yeast could do more. For example, US-05 make bad beer after the 2nd or 3rd generation under the same conditions.
 
hi
a little off topic but i am dry hopping a lager for the first time this week and wanted to just dump the hops in instead of hop sacking them. if i harvest this yeast cake after are the hops heavy enough that they will settle out or will my slurry be to full of hop particles for the next batch.

thanks
 
It's prowlly too late to help now but in the future. Most ale yeasts used for brews we dry hop have a very thick krausen and when lots of kettle or dry hopping I top crop it for next gen. The brown/green that's on top gets tossed and the tan cream saved. The only issue is I don't know the cell count so only one more ferment, I never give it another generation after that.
 
You will probably have some mixed in, I'm not sure if it's worth filtering out or if that's just going to introduce more potentially unwanted critters. When I do a heavy dry hop and want to re-use the cake, I just make sure I am doing a similar beer on top and call it good at two. I am nearing the end of fermentation on a hoppy Blonde Ale, a Rye IPA is going to go right on top once I keg it. The 4oz of dry hops for the Blonde will just add to the character of the IPA.
 
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