Yeast Harvesting Apparati

[Thunderous]

HBT:

What do you use?

 

[dcHokie]

Do you have a centrifuge or a time-machine? If not, you can just use sanitized glass jars

 

[Thunderous]

A time machine would be nice. How to you go about collecting the yeast from a carboy?

 

[dcHokie]

I follow the process in Bernie Brewer's Yeast Washing Illustrated thread exactly and have great results reusing my harvested yeast

 

[Thunderous]

Thanks. Cheers!

 

[Zamial]

I have been reading up on/focusing in on yeast recently myself. While not for everyone I have a frozen yeast bank, a pressure cooker with 15# weight (poor man's autoclave), hand torch, pipettes, an oxygen system, a DIY stir plate w/ bars, some different sized Erlenmeyer flasks, different sized canning jars w/ lids and 2 SS shakers (Wild yeast harvesting vessels).

I am just starting out beyond making starters but I am all set to be able to harvest yeast from commercial brew bottles to the wild forest and anywhere in between. I have already turned 1 smack pack into 10 frozen vials.

To me this aspect of the hobby is like a "mini brew day" and I approach it as such. I grow the smack pack/warm the vial for a few hours, make up a starter or grab a pre made one, measure it all out, boil it, chill it, oxygenate it, pitch the yeast, cover, place on stir bar for 24 hours, chill, harvest yeast and/or pitch remaining yeast into chilled wort, clean it all up and put it away.

I would guess I have under $150 in all my equipment and I have way more than I need (but don't we all with this hobby? ).

As for the wild yeast that is in the works for this fall when the conditions are the best for harvesting.

Just about every aspect of this has been discussed by people much more knowledgeable than myself, just search for them!