Yeast Washing Question

[Pancoastbrewing]

Recently brewed a 5 gal amber ale using wyeast American Ale II. Decided to try yeast washing for the first time.

Boiled a gallon of water, let it cool and added to the trub and placed in a gallon jug for separation. I wasn't able to start until late in the evening, so I stored the gallon jug in the fridge over night. Obviously, this helped me get a great separation of trub/yeast. The next day I decanted into 1 qt ball jars and waited for the separation. I really didn't get any trub in the bottom of the jars after a few hours. I placed the jars in the fridge for storage.

My question is, did I actually separate out the yeast WITH the trub by putting the gallon jug into the fridge and waiting overnight AKA did I encourage the yeast to flocc out? The stuff I collected in the jars is really clear. I'm afraid to make a starter with this stuff without buying a new yeast pack. Should I be concerned that there is very little usable yeast in my jars? Thanks!

 

[bleme]

If you only poured the water off into your quart jars, then you just have quart jars of water (and a minuscule amount of yeast). You should have been able to make out 2 layers of sediment below the water. The darker layer is trub and the lighter layer is your yeast.

 

[Smellyglove]

Imo you should let the jar/glass/whatever rest for 5-15 minutes and decant what's not settled on the bottom. If you wait to long the small particles (yeast) will all settle on the top of the big trub-particles. The big trub usually settles pretty fast.

 

[shoengine]

Mine was all one color, with no real separation. I got half a quart of the stuff. Washed twice with the same result.

 

[Pancoastbrewing]

Oh well, sounds like I screwed it all up haha Guess I'll just have to buy more yeast and try again!

 

[bleme]

Letting it sit overnight (which is what I do) it should have looked similar to this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/first-yeast-washing-attempt.116912/

Letting it sit a few minutes, like SmellyGlove suggests would be more like this: