yeast washing

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Plumeja

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i was wondering how you decide on how much of the yeast you use when making your starter. there must be a method to measuring it out. or is it use the whole cake in a jar at a time and build it up in a starter.
can there be bad effects of using too much yeast in a starter????
there is alot of info on how to wash the yeast but i couldnt find too much on pitching it or measuring it out so there is consistent amounts.
can you handle yeast in some manner so that it can me measured out, like when you buy white lab tubes??
is there a whole lot more questions but i will leave it at that
thanks
jason
 
You typically measure it by volume.... Cups, mililiters, whatever you prefer. Yeast calculators like Mr. Malty will tell you how much to use.

If you're pitching on the yeast cake directly for your next brew (I.e. not washing) use about 1/5 to 1/3 or so... save the rest for another brew.

I've pretty much stopped washing except for longer term storage. I just keep the slurry in a jar until ready to use. Unless I've heavily dry hopped or added fruit or something. If you google for "yeast washing exposed" and "yeast washing revisited", you'll find a couple of blog posts by Woodland Brew (also a member here) where his analysis shows there's not much to be gained from the typical washing process over just pitching the slurry.

For a yeast I want to reuse, I rack off the beer, add enough water ( a cup or two? Maybe more) to help loosen the yeast cake by swirling. Then I fill 2-3 sanitized pint jars with slurry, label them with date, strain and generation, then pop them in the fridge.

Once it settles out, I'll have a 1-2 inch layer of yeast In th bottom of the jar. For the starter, I'll decant off the old beer add a little water to swirl it around then pitch the whole thing into a 2 liter starter.

If its recently harvested and not too trubby, I'll just let t warm up a little and pitch it directly with no starter. It's easily 2-3 white labs vials worth if not more. Probably not quite the same viability as a fresh vial, though.
 
Making starter is always good idea. I dry hop in primary and just dump about 1gallon distilled water in after siphoning to bottle bucket then 2 64oz mason jars will yield about 200 ml slurry in 32 oz jars( 2 of them) . That's cleaner slurry.... More water in a larger vessel or two equals cleaner results. The other times before that it still worked fine just had more stuff that could have been washed out.
 
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