Yeast Washing Illustrated

[TBaGZ]

Made a started with the first batch of washed yeast last night. I washed it back on 7-28, so we shall see how this goes. The first pic is after being in the fridge for a day after washing and the next was right before I made the starter.

 

[Beer-lord]

Friday I'll be using my first washed yeast starter which I'm going to make first thing tomorrow. I've now got 3 groups of yeast in the fridge and know I'll likely throw some out before I can use them all but I'll die trying.
Good luck.

 

[bmock79]

Or put another identical jar next to it. Fill it up to the same level with water, then dump that water into a measuring cup. Bonus: no math.

Awesome thanks!

 

[Homercidal]

Found a quart jar with washed lager yeast from I don't know when...

Curious to see if it will make good beer. Maybe when it gets real cold out I'll rig up a heater and brew a lager.

 

[bmock79]

Made a started with the first batch of washed yeast last night. I washed it back on 7-28, so we shall see how this goes. The first pic is after being in the fridge for a day after washing and the next was right before I made the starter.

How many ml's of yeast you think you got in there?

 

[TBaGZ]

20ish

 

[chemdoc]

Just used a starter of my first washed yeast. Washed in late August. Took a while to get the starter going (~48 hrs), but pitched it and it was bubbling away in the fermenter within a few hours. Seems pretty good so far. If the beer turns out well, I'll be trying this out on other strains.

 

[bmock79]

20ish

So you used 20 on the yeastcalc.com site to tell you how to build your starter?

Thanks

 

[pabloj13]

So you used 20 on the yeastcalc.com site to tell you how to build your starter?

Thanks

Use Mr Malty to figure out how many billion cells you have/mL and multiply that by the number of mLs you have to get billions of cells. Then input that into Yeastcalc.

For example, take that yeast washed on 7-28. If you go to the Repitching from Slurry tab and input 7-28 as the manufacture date, set the slurry thickness to ~3billion cells/mL and set the non-yeast % to 10% (looks like a nice clean harvest) it says you need 641 mL of yeast to get 177 billion cells. 177/641= 0.276 billion cells/mL or 276 million cells/mL. Now multiply that by the number of mLs, in this case 20mL to get total viable cells. 20 * 0.276 = 5.5 billion cells. You would input that into yeastcalc (and now set viability to 100% since we've already accounted for that).

 

[TBaGZ]

So, does this look right?

 

[pabloj13]

So, does this look right?

Yeah, looks right to me. Others might have some ideas on different volumes. Boy, it really shows you how much a stir plate helps though...

 

[jwalker1140]

But isn't there a difference between the 'Repitching from Slurry' tab and what this thread is about? I thought mrmalty assumed someone just pours some of the yeast cake into a jar and throws it into the fridge. At least that's what I think of when someone uses the term 'slurry.'

I always thought one of the keys to yeast washing was using water that has had much of the oxygen driven off in order to encourage the yeast to go dormant, thereby extending its viability. Assuming that's the case, wouldn't mrmalty significantly underestimate the viability of washed yeast?

I appreciate the notion that maybe it's best to just go with what mrmalty says, realizing that the results may be very conservative, but I just have to wonder if this makes sense when I look at the results from the yeastcalc.com screen shot above where it shows 5.5 bil cells need to be grown up to 219.

Is this reasonable or is comparing 'slurry' to 'washed' like comparing apples to oranges?

 

[TBaGZ]

Yeah, looks right to me. Others might have some ideas on different volumes. Boy, it really shows you how much a stir plate helps though...

Yes, this will be my last starter without one.

 

[pabloj13]

But isn't there a difference between the 'Repitching from Slurry' tab and what this thread is about? I thought mrmalty assumed someone just pours some of the yeast cake into a jar and throws it into the fridge. At least that's what I think of when someone uses the term 'slurry.'

I always thought one of the keys to yeast washing was using water that has had much of the oxygen driven off in order to encourage the yeast to go dormant, thereby extending its viability. Assuming that's the case, wouldn't mrmalty significantly underestimate the viability of washed yeast?

I appreciate the notion that maybe it's best to just go with what mrmalty says, realizing that the results may be very conservative, but I just have to wonder if this makes sense when I look at the results from the yeastcalc.com screen shot above where it shows 5.5 bil cells need to be grown up to 219.

Is this reasonable or is comparing 'slurry' to 'washed' like comparing apples to oranges?

I have found the Yeastcalc estimates for how much yeast I will end up with after the first starter with washed yeast to be pretty darned close, which implies that the yeast behaved the way the algorithm predicted. I guess if you look at the liquid yeast tab the viability drops more slowly than the slurry tab. It's possible it's a little too conservative.

 

[jwalker1140]

I have found the Yeastcalc estimates for how much yeast I will end up with after the first starter with washed yeast to be pretty darned close, which implies that the yeast behaved the way the algorithm predicted.

Interesting. Did you determine that by cell count or by measuring the volume of settled yeast?

I think what I would really like to see is a cell count done on washed yeast of various ages to get a better understanding of how it compares to the results from the mrmalty 'liquid yeast' and 'repitching from slurry' tabs. (Maybe I should ask Santa for a microscope and hemocytometer!) Short of that, I'm inclined to go with your approach of starting with the 'repitching' tab set to 3 and 10.

 

[pabloj13]

Interesting. Did you determine that by cell count or by measuring the volume of settled yeast?

I think what I would really like to see is a cell count done on washed yeast of various ages to get a better understanding of how it compares to the results from the mrmalty 'liquid yeast' and 'repitching from slurry' tabs. (Maybe I should ask Santa for a microscope and hemocytometer!) Short of that, I'm inclined to go with your approach of starting with the 'repitching' tab set to 3 and 10.

It was just from the settled yeast. I do have many microscopes and hemacytometers. I should check some of my washed yeast.

 

[jwalker1140]

It was just from the settled yeast. I do have many microscopes and hemacytometers. I should check some of my washed yeast.

I think a study that looks at this carefully would be of tremendous value.

There's a lot of information on the viability of new yeast and of yeast slurries (the first post in the thread called 'why to not pitch on your yeast cake' has a lot of good info on this, with references), but I haven't found much on washed yeast as it's presented in this thread. It seems reasonable that the viability of washed yeast would fall somewhere in between new and slurry, but whether this is true, or whether washed tends to be more like one than the other, I have no idea.

 

[TBaGZ]

Made a started with the first batch of washed yeast last night. I washed it back on 7-28, so we shall see how this goes. The first pic is after being in the fridge for a day after washing and the next was right before I made the starter.

Had some good activity showing when I got home from work tonight. Going to crash it tonight an step it up in the morning.

 

[shaunvfx]

So, I am pretty sure something went wrong somewhere. When I threw the water in the carboy and shook it around I let it sit for 20 minutes or so. Basically it looked just like the jar in the picture just a bigger version.
Is this even useable?


Looks like all I have is trub and a tiny layer of yeast in the jar, any ideas? It seemed easy enough but obviously not. Are you guys racking off after the shake up in primary or are you pouring? I'm using a 6.5 glass carboy.

 

[jwalker1140]

By the looks of the photo it seems like you may have brought over quite a bit of the trub. Here's what I do, and it always turns out just like the photos from the original post.

Once the beer has been racked out, I shake the carboy like mad to loosen everything before I add the water, just so I don't have to shake as much once I've added the water that has had the oxygen driven off. Once everything is loose and the clumps are gone, I add water to the carboy, shake just enough to mix well, let it sit for 10-20 minutes and then I pour the liquid on top - being very careful to not disturb the settled trub - into my 1 gal jug. I let that sit for another 10-20 minutes and then I very carefully pour the liquid on top into 2-4 pint jars.

As far as how long I let it sit, I pour to the next jar right when I start to see yeast settling. It's usually pretty obvious because you'll see a fine layer start to form that's much lighter in color than what's already settled. Hope this helps.

 

[shaunvfx]

By the looks of the photo it seems like you brought over quite a bit of the trub. Here's what I do, and it always turns out just like the photos from the original post.

Once the beer has been racked out, I shake the carboy like mad to loosen everything before I add the water, just so I don't have to shake as much once I've added the water that has had the oxygen driven off. Once everything is loose and the clumps are gone, I add water to the carboy, shake just to mix, let it sit for 10-20 minutes and then I pour the liquid on top - being very careful to not disturb the settled trub - into my 1 gal jug. I let that sit fxor another 10-20 minutes and then I very carefully pour the liquid on top into 2-4 pint jars.

As far as how long I let it sit, I pour to the next jar once I start to see yeast settling. It's usually pretty obvious because you'll start to see a layer form that's much lighter in color than what's already settled. Hope this helps.

I guess my problem is that it seemed like the layer sitting on top was extremely thin in the carboy after letting it sit. It seemed difficult to just pour that off, I would say the top was under 1/4" thick.

If I want to salvage could I boil some corn sugar and make a mini starter then decant it off add cooled boiled water and refrigerate?

 

[jwalker1140]

To clarify, I don't try to pour off or transfer the thin layer of yeast that's started to settle in the carboy. At the first sign of settling, most of the yeast is still in suspension. Seeing the yeast start to settle is just an indication that the heavier trub has mostly settled out and the lighter yeast is now starting to settle out too. But you don't really want that to happen. You want as much of the yeast as possible to be in suspension so when you pour the liquid into your 1 gal jug, you'll be pouring mostly yeast and not trub.

 

[grndslm]

shaunvfx:

To maximize washed yeast and minimize trub...

(1) If pouring, add the boiled and cooled water, then immediately lay the carboy on its side and add a rag to prevent the carboy from rolling off the counter [table, or what have you]. Wait 25 to 30 minutes, then pour into mason jars.

(2) If using a racking cane, add the boiled and cooled water, then immediately place a rag [newspapers, or what have you] under the bottom of one side of the carboy. This way, the trub will fall to the opposite corner... and after 25 to 30 minutes, you will be able to siphon off more washed yeast and less tru, which is pretty much the entire goal here.

 

[msa8967]

shaunvfx:

To maximize washed yeast and minimize trub...

(1) If pouring, add the boiled and cooled water, then immediately lay the carboy on its side and add a rag to prevent the carboy from rolling off the counter [table, or what have you]. Wait 25 to 30 minutes, then pour into mason jars.

(2) If using a racking cane, add the boiled and cooled water, then immediately place a rag [newspapers, or what have you] under the bottom of one side of the carboy. This way, the trub will fall to the opposite corner... and after 25 to 30 minutes, you will be able to siphon off more washed yeast and less tru, which is pretty much the entire goal here.

I have been doing (2) for my last several washing as wel as using 25-50% more water than before. This has made it much easier to see the yeast separating and racking this is now easier.

 

[Beer-lord]

My 2 cents as someone who just used washed yeast for the first time and who's jar looked like it had more trub than yeast is to relax. If you make a starter, you should be fine. Yes, too much trub may not be the best thing but you'll get better.
Mine had me worried but 18 hours later I got results. Maybe not as fast as I wanted but I made sure that my starter was big enough to do the job.
Next time I'll do even better. You're getting great info here too!

 

[dlyford]

I followed the directions and had great success. Here is a pic of the final product.

 

[milldoggy]

I followed the directions and had great success. Here is a pic of the final product.

Looks good. Like the honey jars.

 

[msa8967]

I think these jars look great.

 

[raribonga]

Thank you for the info

 

[LVGriff]

This is a great write up. You've just helped me start harvesting...thanks! The pictures are excellent.