Washing yeast

[kcross13]

What are the major problems from not washing the yeast? Is it a necessary step, or if the cake is fresh and conditions sanitary can you just go with the cake? Really curious.

 

[gregpio85]

If you look at the washing yeast thread. When you first put the water into your carboy of trub, the very bottom layers are proteins and hops.

My understanding is that you generally want to keep your wort away from those bottom layers. Washing keeps the trub from imparting any flavors into your beer.

I haven't heard any problems with the flocculated yeast. As far as I understand, they'll wake up and start eating again, but the main issue is with the non-yeast particles at the bottom of your cake.

 

[shadows69]

I don't know the pros and cons but I do both and never had a problem. In fact I like putting wort right on the yeast cake, it takes off quick, no off flavor to speak of. Now I wouldn't recommend doing it batch after batch but about 3 times than wash yeast and repeat process. Running on a year of doing this with 1056. Still running strong. Washing cleans out the left over hops in the cake.

 

[jonmohno]

If your going to use it from bottleing then making a batch within the next few days just use some slurry.Washing would be better if you planned on bottleing it into seperate jars to store and use for a while. I dont know if i trust adding water to the fermenter then pouring that off from a dirty krausend carboy,unless it was from secondary.
I just scooped some out in a jar and added that to my wort.I also had some preboiled water and added some to that for the next batch. Idoubt that little bit of trub is going to effect it that much. And storing some slurry in water should be fine for a week or two at least probably more.