Washing, cake and reanimation

[Hamsterbite]

Over the weekend I racked a Belgian Dark Strong (DFH Raison D'etre extract clone) to secondary and attempted to save and wash the yeast.

I boiled a gallon of water, chilled it, and added it to the trub and cake in my plastic fermenter and then gave it a good swirling. I decanted it into two quart size mason jars. The yeast, BTW is WLP540 Belgian Abbey IV. The beer's initial gravity was 1.o72 (At 70F), and it was at 1.030 when I racked it to secondary.

I intended to decant the quart jars into smaller jars later that evening but got sidetracked. I ended up putting the quart jars in the fridge to keep it safe and put it to sleep. Perhaps this was a mistake?

So today, the stratification looked great. Trub on the bottom, with a white cake on top, and a fairly clear (by clear I mean translucent, but amber in color) water column on top of it all. It occurred to me that most of the yeast had settled out and that I would have to start over again by warming it up and agitating it again.
So far, that is not working. Now, what settles first, are large chunks of white yeast cake, then the trub. So my question is, do I just need to wait a bit longer and keep agitating to break up the cake chunks? How can I get the yeast to go back into suspension?

 

[Huff360]

Why not decant the trub and weak beer off the top of the yeast, add fresh sterile water and be done with it?

 

[Hamsterbite]

Why not decant the trub and weak beer off the top of the yeast, add fresh sterile water and be done with it?

I guess I have nothing to lose...I'll give it a shot. The couple vids I watched were sort of done the opposite way. They were letting just the trub settle out, but most of the yeast stayed in suspension and they decanted that.
I wasn't sure if I'd be able to siphon off the tub layer without also sucking out the cake beneath with it.

 

[CastleHollow]

Next time, I would just leave the yeast in the quart jars after the first washing. Your yeast would still be viable, you'd just have more trub than you intend.

 

[Huff360]

I guess I have nothing to lose...I'll give it a shot. The couple vids I watched were sort of done the opposite way. They were letting just the trub settle out, but most of the yeast stayed in suspension and they decanted that.

It's no problem to do it the other way. Use something like 002 (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/cant-get-washed-yeast-separate-323947/) and you pretty much HAVE to do it the way your are.

Yeast are different, you have to adapt. Just cause the tutorial said the yeast is the top layer does not mean it always is.