Yeast Washing Epic Fail?

[jrfehon]

So my lovely wife got me a stir plate for Christmas and I've decided to start washing yeast. The photo below is a quart jar with 3724 I washed after making a saison. My process I think was good.

1. Racked my wort out of the bucket.
2. Boiled two quarts of water - let cool to 70 degrees.
3. Added water to trub and shook up the contents.
4. After 5-10 minutes I poured the top layer into a quart jar and put into the fridge.
5. The next day, I decanted the quart jar into another quart jar (pictured here)

As you can see, after the jar sat in the fridge for a week, there's not much yeast at the bottom. Is this enough to make a starter or did I screw the whole thing up?

Also, I've read that people use four pint jars for storing yeast not a quart jar like I used. I have a stash of 10oz jars. Would those work in place of the pint jars (10oz vs. 16oz)?

 

[masonsjax]

Yeast washing is pointless unless you're a huge brewery with a good reason, and even then you're doing an acid wash. Just full up some jars of whatever size you like with trub, and make starters from that, stepping up if you need to until you reach the desired pitch rate.

 

[BigFloyd]

It appears that you threw away most of your yeast cells.

I have also moved away from rinsing harvested yeast before storing. I now simply harvest into a mason jar, let the yeast/trub settle out a day or two in the fridge, decant off the beer and fill with some water that's been boiled/chilled.

 

[jrfehon]

It appears that you threw away most of your yeast cells.

I have also moved away from rinsing harvested yeast before storing. I now simply harvest into a mason jar, let the yeast/trub settle out a day or two in the fridge, decant off the beer and fill with some water that's been boiled/chilled.

What size mason jar?

When you make a starter do you pitch the entire contents of the mason jar?

 

[QuercusMax]

I agree with BigFloyd. I recently lost 4 batches due to infected rinsed yeast. I'm going to stick with just pitching the slurry directly.

 

[finsfan]

Forget any step of saving yeast after it has made beer and save it from the beginning. This article gives you a step by step guide to yeast harvesting. You will always have fresh, 1st gen, clean yeast (if done correctly).

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/entries/yeast-harvesting-novel-approach.html

 

[jrfehon]

Forget any step of saving yeast after it has made beer and save it from the beginning. This article gives you a step by step guide to yeast harvesting. You will always have fresh, 1st gen, clean yeast (if done correctly).

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/entries/yeast-harvesting-novel-approach.html

Awesome article! Thanks for the tip finsfan! I'm going to start harvesting.

 

[finsfan]

Awesome article! Thanks for the tip finsfan! I'm going to start harvesting.

I washed yeast once and then saw that article, changed my yeast culturing completely and I love it!

 

[BxBrewer]

The article is exactly what I've been doing since reading it some time ago.

 

[QuercusMax]

Only problem with that is I like brewing lagers, and growing up enough yeast for a 5-gallon batch of mid-strength lager is a gigantic PITA, let alone something like a Doppelbock!

I won a bronze for my Oktoberfest brewed with 4th generation WLP838 harvested from the fermenter. My technique now is to brew a small beer with one vial, harvest that to make a 1.050-1.060-ish beer, then harvest that to make a big beer. Requires some planning, however.

 

[finsfan]

Only problem with that is I like brewing lagers, and growing up enough yeast for a 5-gallon batch of mid-strength lager is a gigantic PITA, let alone something like a Doppelbock!

I won a bronze for my Oktoberfest brewed with 4th generation WLP838 harvested from the fermenter. My technique now is to brew a small beer with one vial, harvest that to make a 1.050-1.060-ish beer, then harvest that to make a big beer. Requires some planning, however.

I have never made a lager but I bet that would be more of a task to harvest yeast instead of washing it. If you had a week or two notice, you could build a starter large enough, just need the time and patience.

 

[ajf]

So my lovely wife got me a stir plate for Christmas and I've decided to start washing yeast. The photo below is a quart jar with 3724 I washed after making a saison. My process I think was good.

1. Racked my wort out of the bucket.
2. Boiled two quarts of water - let cool to 70 degrees.
3. Added water to trub and shook up the contents.
4. After 5-10 minutes I poured the top layer into a quart jar and put into the fridge.
5. The next day, I decanted the quart jar into another quart jar (pictured here)

As you can see, after the jar sat in the fridge for a week, there's not much yeast at the bottom. Is this enough to make a starter or did I screw the whole thing up?

Also, I've read that people use four pint jars for storing yeast not a quart jar like I used. I have a stash of 10oz jars. Would those work in place of the pint jars (10oz vs. 16oz)?

What you did wrong was waiting overnight between steps 4 and 5. If you just wait 10 - 20 minutes (or 5 minutes for WY1968 or WLP002), most of the trub will have settled out, but the yeast will still be in suspension. Then you want to save the yeast.

There's plenty of yeast there to make a starter (I used to make starters from a single bottle of naturally conditioned beer), but you will probably need to do a two or three step starter.

-a.