Yeast Banking / Seperating Funnel

[TaylorBrewed]

Hey Brewers,
I dont know how many have history with this but it's worth a shot. I just recently decided to go down the path of making a frozen yeast bank. The plan is to make a 1000ml starter for my given yeast and then to divide it into tubes and add a water glycerin mix and freeze.

I have a seperating funnel and have never used it for yeast. I normally crash starters for a day and decant off the beer. If I was to use the seperating funnel would it be best to crash the yeast in the seperating funnel and then separate the yeast from the beer? Would the yeast cake clog the funnel? Or would it be best to just let the yeast settle out in the seperating funnel at room temp for a few hours and then separate so the mixture wouldn't be so dense.

I hope all this makes sense and if you have any experience I would love to hear your feedback.

 

[InspectorJon]

Dang, I wish I had not read this. I don't know the answer to your question but I had to look up separating funnel and now I want one...

 

[day_trippr]

I would definitely do a test run before actually counting on it to work. My concern would be the yeast would settle into a mass that resists "dumping".

I usually do a 5 liter over-built starter using ~50-75 ml of stored, dense white yeast, to produce enough to pitch 11 gallons of wort, plus reserve a third for the next cycle. It can take a good minute of vigorously shaking the e-flask to get the settled yeast to let go of their death grip on the glass bottom and mix into a cream instead of lumpy "oatmeal". The same thing happens later with the mason jars on brew day mornings.

Based on that I'm skeptical this would work as desired, but I don't want to discourage a contribution to...SCIENCE!

Cheers!