Harvesting Yeast & Starting - for tomorrow?

[muddy1015]

Couldn't find anything on here that directly addressed my question->

I am planning to harvest yeast out of a primary fermentation today that I'm switching to secondary, it took a few days longer than expected and I was planning on making the exact same beer tomorrow.

If I still want to make it tomorrow can I harvest/clean the yeast and put it right into a starter or does it really need to sit in a fridge for a few days at least?

 

[balrog]

Does not need to stay in fridge for days prior to using. Can simply be scooped into sanitized container and kept in fridge overnight to avoid contaimination and allow you to clean and sanitize the FVessel for tomorrow's batch. I have waited a few hours after racking off beer out of bucket, prior to finishing boil/cool and pitching right into prior yeast, but I wouldn't want to rack off the beer, and put the lid back on and wait more than a few hours as I'd be worried about contamination.

 

[jbaysurfer]

You can put it right into your starter, I'd just sterilized/sanitize several jars and harvest all the yeast you need to pitch into several more batches though. But I'm not sure if you're trying to farm it or just get some yeast for another few batches...

 

[flars]

Couldn't find anything on here that directly addressed my question->

I am planning to harvest yeast out of a primary fermentation today that I'm switching to secondary, it took a few days longer than expected and I was planning on making the exact same beer tomorrow.

If I still want to make it tomorrow can I harvest/clean the yeast and put it right into a starter or does it really need to sit in a fridge for a few days at least?

You don't mention the OG of your beer. Depending on the OG you will have two to four times the yeast you need for the next one. No starter required. Harvesting from high OG beers will not result in healthy yeast to reuse.
http://www.yeastcalc.co/washed-yeast-calculator
Leave enough beer in the fermentor to just cover the yeast when the fermentor sits flat. Swirl up the contents. Tilt the fermentor for a half hour for hop debris and heavier break material to settle. When you see a thin line of beer coming to the surface you are ready to harvest. Fill a sanitized quart jar with the yeast/beer mixture. You will have a quart of thin slurry to work with in the calculator.
Don't wash/rinse harvested yeast with boiled water. This is detrimental to the yeast. Store the yeast under beer.

 

[muddy1015]

Thanks for replys, my OG is 1.055 so it looks like 1 quart of the yeast slurry will be more than enough.

Seems like a starter is not even necessary then, just take the yeast out of the fridge when I start the brew day and it should be fine come time for pitch? Kind of an offshoot question, if I did a starter just for kicks could that result in too much yeast or would that be hard to do?

 

[flars]

Thanks for replys, my OG is 1.055 so it looks like 1 quart of the yeast slurry will be more than enough.

Seems like a starter is not even necessary then, just take the yeast out of the fridge when I start the brew day and it should be fine come time for pitch? Kind of an offshoot question, if I did a starter just for kicks could that result in too much yeast or would that be hard to do?

If you pitch the full quart of harvested yeast you would most likely have to much. Over pitching is less of a problem than under pitching up to a point though.

If you made a starter you would have more yeast. You would also have fresher yeast to store for use in the future that would not have been stressed by fermenting out a beer.

Check this link: http://brulosophy.com/yeast-harvesting/

 

[flars]

Just to add. On 7/13 I brewed an American Amber Ale, OG 1.047 with generation 2 WY1056. I pitched yeast harvested on 3/16. No starter. 7/11 there was 450 ml of compact yeast in the quart jar.
I estimated the jar contained 194 billion cells. I'm conservative. Target pitch was 166 billion cells. First SG reading was on 7/22, 1.011 temperature corrected.

 

[LLBeanJ]

Thanks for replys, my OG is 1.055 so it looks like 1 quart of the yeast slurry will be more than enough.

Seems like a starter is not even necessary then, just take the yeast out of the fridge when I start the brew day and it should be fine come time for pitch? Kind of an offshoot question, if I did a starter just for kicks could that result in too much yeast or would that be hard to do?

No, you don't need a starter. In fact, you only need about 1/2 cup of that slurry pitched directly into your wort.

You could make a starter if you wanted, but you would just use a small amount to inoculate the wort, like say a tablespoon or two, unless you needed a really big starter then you would have to figure out how much to use. But, again, there's really no need unless you wanted to make a starter and then save it for a future brew, but if that was the goal, you can just save some of the slurry now and make a starter with it later when it came time to brew again. Or save a lot of the slurry now and brew with it later, perhaps without the need for a starter. It all depends on how many cells you'll need and how old the yeast is.

 

[muddy1015]

Ok, took it right off the top in the carboy after letting it sit at an angle and then let that settle in a mason jar and poured that yeast into another jar. Ended up with 1/2-3/4 of a quart. Planning on leaving that at pitching temperature and then pitching half of it.

Thanks for the help!