Never wash your yeast again!!!!

[chainlife]

i do something similar to this but skip starters. Let's use wlp090 as an example.

I'll brew a 6gal batch of 1.050 apa and split it between (2) vessels. In one i'll pitch the vial of wlp090. When i rack off the yeast cake, i'll dump a 5.5gal 1.060+ ipa on top of it. When i rack that ipa off, i'll harvest half the yeast cake in a couple mason jars and dump fresh iipa on the other half. I'll usually throw it out after that and start with my (2) harvested jars back with another ipa on each jar. So i'm thinking i get about 6.5 batches of 5gal beer off a vial of yeast. I guess that gets the cost down to nearly $1 a batch.

so, it sounds like you have wort waiting in the wings as you rack off your primary. Once racked, you just dump your wort right into that primary with the yeast cake still in the bottom. Is this correct? If so, do you sanitize your primary between racking and filling w/ the new wort?

 

[stpug]

So having said that, my question is at what temperatures are optimal for storing yeast?

Refrigeration: weeks to few months
Frozen: many many months to a couple years
Frozen (-80F): forever

 

[fearwig]

There are threads you can search for on freezing yeast in a glycerine solution to minimize cell damage. I know from food experience that the faster freezing the smaller the crystals and less cell damage (the principle behind individual quick freezing), so you probably want to freeze small samples (like test tubes) since you're going to put them in a starter anyway.

 

[mbbransc]

so, it sounds like you have wort waiting in the wings as you rack off your primary. Once racked, you just dump your wort right into that primary with the yeast cake still in the bottom. Is this correct? If so, do you sanitize your primary between racking and filling w/ the new wort?

That is correct (unless I've harvested some of the yeast cake prior to keep from overpitching too much). I've been known to bottle a batch while mashing or boiling a new batch. No, I don't use any extra procedures to sanitize the previously sanitized but now used fermenter. I do keep it covered until the fresh wort can arrive.

 

[chainlife]

that is correct (unless i've harvested some of the yeast cake prior to keep from overpitching too much). I've been known to bottle a batch while mashing or boiling a new batch. No, i don't use any extra procedures to sanitize the previously sanitized but now used fermenter. I do keep it covered until the fresh wort can arrive.

why do you start with a smaller beer and add progressively larger beers to that yeast cake? Also, what is the reason to stop using the same yeast cake? Don't the live yeast just keep multiplying and feeding off the dead yeasts?

 

[mbbransc]

I increase batch size and gravity with the idea being that the previous batch was basically a large starter, but I drink the beer instead of decant it. When I get to 1.060-1.070, I'll generally use 1/4 of the yeast cake for another batch. I generally stop after high gravity beers because I read somewhere high gravity beers probably have stressed the yeast and you'll have mutations. No since in risking a full batch of beer.

 

[mblanks2]

I use a yeast pitching calculator (mrmalty.com has a slurry option) but if I store it more than a couple of weeks, I always make a starter. I tend to save slurry in quart jars, since that's always more than enough for a 10 gallon batch.

I sanitize the jars, and pour the yeast into them, and label with the strain and date.

Great, thanks.

 

[masonsjax]

You don't have to increase the gravity of subsequent beers when reusing yeast cakes. I make around ten batches on one yeast cake, harvesting a jar of slurry from the first batch of each series. I dump out a little of the cake each time so I'm not overpitching. When I'm ready to start a new series, I make a starter from the jar I harvested earlier. If I dont use the harvested yeast within 6 months or so, I decant the spent beer from it and replace with fresh wort. This seems to be the simplest way to stretch a vial of yeast as far as possible.

 

[mbbransc]

I agree that's fine. Just telling what I do.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[chainlife]

You don't have to increase the gravity of subsequent beers when reusing yeast cakes. I make around ten batches on one yeast cake, harvesting a jar of slurry from the first batch of each series. I dump out a little of the cake each time so I'm not overpitching. When I'm ready to start a new series, I make a starter from the jar I harvested earlier. If I dont use the harvested yeast within 6 months or so, I decant the spent beer from it and replace with fresh wort. This seems to be the simplest way to stretch a vial of yeast as far as possible.

sorry for the redundancy, I just want to be crystal clear on your means and methods. You buy a vial or package of yeast and brew a batch. You rack/bottle that batch. You pour off a jar of slurry, label it and put in the fridge. With the remaining cake, you just pour wort on it and let that beer ferment. The next time u do the exact same process, only instead of keeping a jar or so, u just throw it away, repeating this up to nine more times. This total of ten times lapsing of re using the yeast cake, you toss the cake. The next brew you use the yeast you reserved from the initial brew (I assume you use a starter). So, my question is, do you repeat the entire process over? If so, how many times do you set aside the initial reserve and does the reserve start to loose potency over generations? I would assume you would get a diminishing returns of cake re use for each additional generation (meaning the second gen u can get 9 batches, but the 8th gen u get say 2 batches), but not sure, I have one brew (ag zombie dust clone) sitting in the primary under my belt, so I appreciate any help and info!!

 

[masonsjax]

sorry for the redundancy, I just want to be crystal clear on your means and methods. You buy a vial or package of yeast and brew a batch. You rack/bottle that batch. You pour off a jar of slurry, label it and put in the fridge. With the remaining cake, you just pour wort on it and let that beer ferment. The next time u do the exact same process, only instead of keeping a jar or so, u just throw it away, repeating this up to nine more times. This total of ten times lapsing of re using the yeast cake, you toss the cake. The next brew you use the yeast you reserved from the initial brew (I assume you use a starter). So, my question is, do you repeat the entire process over? If so, how many times do you set aside the initial reserve and does the reserve start to loose potency over generations? I would assume you would get a diminishing returns of cake re use for each additional generation (meaning the second gen u can get 9 batches, but the 8th gen u get say 2 batches), but not sure, I have one brew (ag zombie dust clone) sitting in the primary under my belt, so I appreciate any help and info!!

You got it. Yes I always make a starter when using stored yeast. As for mutation, I have only had one go weird on me, and it was still very drinkable. It was S-04, not sure what generation, I don't really keep track, but the fruity esters that S-04 can produce were more intense and not to my liking. I've made somewhere around 300 batches using probably 8-10 different strains, not counting sours and some new stuff I just bought, but I havent bought the same yeast twice yet.

 

[mtnagel]

sorry for the redundancy, I just want to be crystal clear on your means and methods. You buy a vial or package of yeast and brew a batch. You rack/bottle that batch. You pour off a jar of slurry, label it and put in the fridge. With the remaining cake, you just pour wort on it and let that beer ferment. The next time u do the exact same process, only instead of keeping a jar or so, u just throw it away, repeating this up to nine more times. This total of ten times lapsing of re using the yeast cake, you toss the cake. The next brew you use the yeast you reserved from the initial brew (I assume you use a starter). So, my question is, do you repeat the entire process over? If so, how many times do you set aside the initial reserve and does the reserve start to loose potency over generations? I would assume you would get a diminishing returns of cake re use for each additional generation (meaning the second gen u can get 9 batches, but the 8th gen u get say 2 batches), but not sure, I have one brew (ag zombie dust clone) sitting in the primary under my belt, so I appreciate any help and info!!

You are pretty much guaranteed that you are over pitching if you use the entire yeast cake for your next batch. Read this thread and then decide if you should do that.

 

[masonsjax]

You are pretty much guaranteed that you are over pitching if you use the entire yeast cake for your next batch. Read this thread and then decide if you should do that.

Yes that's important, note that I said in post #68 that I dump out some of the yeast cake every time so that I'm not overpitching. I don't believe it's as bad as underpitching, and I believe pitching rates are difficult to pinpoint without lab equipment, the slurry calculators out there don't even agree with each other. So I don't worry too much, but I certainly wouldn't use the whole cake, since we know that will be too much.

 

[fearwig]

Yes that's important, note that I said in post #68 that I dump out some of the yeast cake every time so that I'm not overpitching. I don't believe it's as bad as underpitching, and I believe pitching rates are difficult to pinpoint without lab equipment, the slurry calculators out there don't even agree with each other. So I don't worry too much, but I certainly wouldn't use the whole cake, since we know that will be too much.

If you're going to estimate, something between 1/3-1/2 the cake is a sane and defensible amount in my experience. I was going to say it depends on how much trub and stuff is down there, but actually it doesn't because it's a proportion, not a volume. Which has me thinking you could come up with a pretty good rule of thumb this way that is probably more accurate than slurry calculators, but it would take some testing to get the right proportion.

 

[WileECoyote]

Yes that's important, note that I said in post #68 that I dump out some of the yeast cake every time so that I'm not overpitching. I don't believe it's as bad as underpitching, and I believe pitching rates are difficult to pinpoint without lab equipment, the slurry calculators out there don't even agree with each other. So I don't worry too much, but I certainly wouldn't use the whole cake, since we know that will be too much.

Hello masonsjax,

How much yeast cake volume would do you dump out to get into the ball park of not under pitching or over pitching ?

And (Im sure this has been answered a thousand times) why not over pitch by using the entire yeast cake? wouldn't doing so just finish your fermentation faster ?

Cheers

 

[fearwig]

Overpitch makes your beer taste thin and watery and just kind of "yeasty" and wrong. It's less noticeable than the funk you get from underpitch but it's pretty unsatisfying. Your fermentation may finish faster but it's not worth it.

 

[stpug]

I've brewed a couple batches by pitching on full yeastcakes. The results were totally satisfactory and the resulting beers were good (one was really good). I did not experience the suggested negative effect of thin body, poor head retention, yeasty taste, etc, but they didn't not clear very quickly either. HOWEVER, I now know this is bad practice ("poor form, sir") and no longer do this. It's equally as easy to pour out 4/5s of your yeastcake into the drain or jars before adding your new wort. Better yet, use a nice clean sanitized bucket and pour in a small amount (around 1/2 cup usually) of yeastcake, and do whatever you want with the rest (drain, jars, bread). I recognize that even though those beers were good, they may have somehow been better had I used restraint in pitching. On the flip side, if you've never pitched on a yeastcake it totally worth doing at least once to witness how quickly a batch of beer can start fermenting (1 HOUR) and see your bucket lid fly across the room a couple hours later

 

[masonsjax]

I eyeball the amount of slurry I leave when dumping some out. For an average gravity beer, I leave maybe a pint if it's mostly yeast, probably close to a quart if there's a lot of hop material in there.

 

[fearwig]

The main reason I do pour-cake-out rather than pour-wort-in is that my buckets get a nasty krausen ring and I don't like to think what's been eating that dried out protein and sugar at the top. I have done it the way described above a few times and everything gets progressively nastier with each subsequent batch, but I admit I've never had a strong reason to think there's an infection risk.

 

[masonsjax]

It does get pretty nasty, but it's just yeast and hops, it doesn't bother me and the yeast don't seem to mind. I've never had an infection, but I can see why some would want to use a fresh vessel each time.

 

[geckholm]

Using White Labs, when I start with a new batch of yeast, I use a sanitized eyedropper to remove some from the White Labs vial and put it into some small vials of salt water solution for storage in the refrigerator. Then step up some starters when I use them. I used to use mason jars, but this way takes up much less room in the fridge.

 

[Remmy]

Never had a problem using harvested yeast. I try to use it as fast as possible after the harvest. All you need is a little bit of time and some DME to create a starter. Simple. I can turn a $7 pack of Wyeast, after it's done fermenting beer #1, into 5-6 additional portions for future beers. I'm saving $35-42.

I tend to only harvest yeast that is more of a general-use yeast. For example, 1056 or 1098. Yeast I will use quite frequently on American and English-style beers (IPAs, Stouts, etc.).

 

[ajandrs]

I “washed” a yeast cake once and will not do it again. Too lengthy and tedious of a process for me personally. I’ve also done the OP’s suggestion of splitting off a starter to store for a later batch (that yeast is still sitting in the fridge waiting to be used. Splitting off the starter was extremely easy and simple, and I would do that ANY day over washing a spent yeast cake. However it sounds like most of you are simply saving your yeast cake without any kind of “washing” involved … just swirl the yeast cake and pour into jars and straight into the fridge.

So I’ve read through all these posts and no one has really talked about trub. Is it safe to assume that none of you are concerned at all with the presence of trub in your stored yeast jars? Are you whirlpooling post boil to eliminate most trub or does it just simply not hurt the yeast throughout storage? I bag my hops in the boil so that they don’t get into my plate chiller so I’m just dealing with hot/cold break in my trub. If all I truly need to do is swirl the yeast cake and dump it into quart sized mason jars then I am ALL for that kind of simplicity.

Assuming that’s the way I go moving forward, is 1 quart of cake slurry (decanted) appropriate for a 5 gallon batch with a 1.050 – 1.060 OG or is that too much yeast? Is there a general rule of thumb for pitch rates? I use Mr Malty for my starters but when you’re dealing with a yeast cake I don’t see how you can be very accurate without the proper lab equipment. On top of all that, if I’m storing the yeast for longer than a month I’m going to want to make a starter with it just to make sure it’s still viable and warmed up for a new batch, so then you’re at 1 quart + your starter amount … how is it possible to know proper pitch amounts at this point, or is it just an semi-edumacated guess?

 

[mtnagel]

No you don't have to worry about the trub or hop material. You have mostly yeast in there.

As for estimating counts, I wrote about how I do it here. Yes, they are educated guesses basically.

 

[fearwig]

I “washed” a yeast cake once and will not do it again. Too lengthy and tedious of a process for me personally. I’ve also done the OP’s suggestion of splitting off a starter to store for a later batch (that yeast is still sitting in the fridge waiting to be used. Splitting off the starter was extremely easy and simple, and I would do that ANY day over washing a spent yeast cake. However it sounds like most of you are simply saving your yeast cake without any kind of “washing” involved … just swirl the yeast cake and pour into jars and straight into the fridge.

So I’ve read through all these posts and no one has really talked about trub. Is it safe to assume that none of you are concerned at all with the presence of trub in your stored yeast jars? Are you whirlpooling post boil to eliminate most trub or does it just simply not hurt the yeast throughout storage? I bag my hops in the boil so that they don’t get into my plate chiller so I’m just dealing with hot/cold break in my trub. If all I truly need to do is swirl the yeast cake and dump it into quart sized mason jars then I am ALL for that kind of simplicity.

Assuming that’s the way I go moving forward, is 1 quart of cake slurry (decanted) appropriate for a 5 gallon batch with a 1.050 – 1.060 OG or is that too much yeast? Is there a general rule of thumb for pitch rates? I use Mr Malty for my starters but when you’re dealing with a yeast cake I don’t see how you can be very accurate without the proper lab equipment. On top of all that, if I’m storing the yeast for longer than a month I’m going to want to make a starter with it just to make sure it’s still viable and warmed up for a new batch, so then you’re at 1 quart + your starter amount … how is it possible to know proper pitch amounts at this point, or is it just an semi-edumacated guess?

In my mind it's very hard to know how much slurry you have until it has settled in the fridge (2-4 days maybe), unless you collect the "whole cake", roughly speaking, and then think about what proportion of the cake you are using. The way I pour of the cake, a quart would be almost the whole thing, and I'd guess that's about twice as much as you need for the beer you describe. It's all about how much liquid you're involving, and that's all about flocculation, temperature, gelatin use, racking technique...

And literally everything to do with yeast is a semi-educated guess, MrMalty just tries to put some data behind it. Don't take anything you see there too literally, there are so many iffy variables that you're really just trying to make sure you're in the right range. Being off by 50% in either direction is not a disaster, but the best way to make sure you're in that range is to shoot for the middle.

 

[mtnagel]

Seems like a good place to ask because there is so much activity around this topic.

I have harvested slurry that would be 17 days from when I harvested it when I brew next week. I've heard that you should use it with in 2 weeks (from the Yeast book and here). I'm thinking I have 2 choices:

1) pitch the appropriate amount as is at 17 days from harvesting.
2) make a starter with a portion of it to wake up the yeast before pitching which will dilute out some of the dead yeast cells and trub that is in there now.

Given those choices, which would you do?

 

[bannerj]

No you don't have to worry about the trub or hop material. You have mostly yeast in there.

As for estimating counts, I wrote about how I do it here. Yes, they are educated guesses basically.

From what I understand this would be just like pitching onto a yeast cake with the same variables...that you want to make sure you are brewing a similar beer or a more intense beer? Is that right?

 

[mtnagel]

That's not a bad idea, but in my experience you are pitching such a small amount into a large amount that it doesn't matter that much. The yeast I was talking about was from a oatmeal stout and I'm going to an IPA. And before that I did a black IPA to an oatmeal stout. Of course this is pitching like a cup of yeast cake, not the entire cake.

The one thing I avoid is reusing yeast cake from a higher gravity beer (>1.070).

That's why harvesting from a starter is ideal. You don't have to worry about any of this but when you can reuse the yeast cake, you can't beat the simplicity of it.

 

[masonsjax]

I recently read of another idea that sounds reasonable to me. When you use a vial of yeast, instead of rinsing and discarding the vial, leave the residual yeast in there and use some of your starter to fill the vial back up. Leave it upright with the lid lightly capped somewhere warm. When that finishes fermenting you'll have what looks like a brand new yeast vial ready to pitch into a starter for next time.

 

[masonsjax]

IME the color of previous beers doesn't noticeably change the next beer. I've done pale ales and wheat beers after stouts without issue. I've even done simple ales after a sour mashed beer that came out just as expected. Not something I'd be concerned about.