Yeast harvesting for a lager

[Trobocco]

I have a czech pilsener going using s23 yeast in my conical fermenter. I am planning on getting a Vienna lager going this weekend which uses the same yeast.

I wanted to see if I could dump the trub into a sanitized container and use it to inoculate the Vienna lager. I was wondering if I could do this rather than making a yeast starter and would I need to wash the yeast?

 

[flars]

You do not need to clean the yeast to reuse it. In some cases you may wish to rinse out some dark debris, but yeast cells do not need to be rinsed. All you need are healthy yeast cells to repitch.

 

[LLBeanJ]

What flars said.

I only brew about 4 lagers per year, but when I do I always brew two back to back so I can direct-pitch slurry from the first one into the second. One starter, two brews.

 

[Trobocco]

Ok so I can just dump the trub into a sanitized container and pitch into my cooled wort?

 

[LLBeanJ]

Yep.

 

[flars]

Read up a little on yeast cell counts of harvested yeast. Mrmalty might be a good start. Using the entire yeast cake may be a big over pitch. The volume you will collect, all or part, and how much of the volume is debris, if you didn't strain out the hop material, will make a difference.