Yeast cake harvesting question

[crstevens15]

Ok so I left a half inch or so of the cream ale in the primary as I bottled the other night. I then swirled it all up and put the slurry in a sanitized half gallon jar and put it in the fridge.

Now it's obviously settled and the bottom half is settled. How do I go about using this? Do I pitch all of it on my next batch or make a starter with half of it... Etc.

Any information is greatly appreciated. For what it's worth its wyeast 1056 and I'd like to make a black ipa next.

 

[pabloj13]

You put the whole cake in there? You don't need even that much, Check out Mr. Malty for what volume of yeast you will need. Probably somewhere on the order of 1/4-1/3 of that cake should be enough, depending on how much you got out.

 

[buzzkill]

my is probably not correct, but I split the cake 4 ways into four jars. then Im good for four 5 gal brews or two 10 gal brews. has worked great for me. if this is wrong I guess I can correct myself.

 

[Kmcogar]

I'm wondering the same thing. I had one spare mason jar laying around so I thought I would give it a try. It's an 8 oz mason jar filled with probably 6 ounces of yeast. Do I put all of that in my starter or just half of it?

 

[crstevens15]

I got about 80% of the cake.

I guess the real question is should I just keep what is currently suspended in the liquid and get rid of all the settlement?

It's in my fridge, I could separate it out into a few bottles. I've never attempted to do this before and I'm just trying to make sure I do it semi correctly so I don't have a fresh batch of wort without good yeast for it!

 

[buzzkill]

you would get rid of the liquid and keep the sediment. if Im reading that right. but keep the yeast coverd. boil,cool some water and put some in to keep yeast under water

 

[crstevens15]

So the sediment is the good stuff?

I thought the settled "trub" (if you will) was the less viable yeasties and the good stuff was still suspended in the liquid.

 

[fpweeks]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/yeast-washing-illustrated-41768/

The Sitcky on Yeast Washing......