Washed Stout Yeast

[wasitim]

What do I have here?

It seems sometimes when I wash yeast, instead of getting yeast rising to the top, I have beer at the top, followed by...something, then something that looks like yeast, then trub.

This was from a 10 gallon ferment in a plastic conical. I've washed it about 6-7 times at this point. It seems like it isn't always the case that the yeast rises to the top.

The right jar is the one I was working out of primarily. In the last rinse, I split it in two. Seem to have yeast in the left one, but it's under some goo.

Any thoughts?

 

[khawk95]

My guess would be the right one has yeast mixed with trub and break material and/or hop residue. The left one looks fine the yeast flocculated quicker than the trub.
Both should have yeast. Do a starter first and you will know for sure.


Roed Haus Brewery

 

[tally350z]

This may seem like a silly question but do you rack off the bottom of the conical during the first stages of fermentation. Might be worth looking into the best time to pull the trub that settles out of the conical, within the first few days. Or do you just wait for fermentation to finish, than drain and rinse that yeast/trub?

 

[khawk95]

You either want to skim off the top krausen during the early stages, or wait for fermentation to complete to wash yeast off the bottom after the beer is in the bottling bucket/ keg.


Roed Haus Brewery

 

[wasitim]

My usual procedure goes something like this:

I have Stout kettle boil kettle with whirpool port.
Whirlpool last 15 minutes of boil.
Recirc through convoluted chiller while chilling to around 90f in the pot using whirpool port to keep the whirpool going as long as I can.
When at temp (typically 65), pump into conical.
Wait at least 3 hours before pitching and do a trub dump.
Oxygenate to at least 14 on the DO meter and pitch.
Depends on yeast, but typically will do another trub dump from the conical to remove junk and early floc around the second day.
Beers, so far (only 10 under belt) have all pretty much finished by day 3 (many by day 2).
Leave it all alone until the end of week two and then keg.
Add some sterilized water to conical, mix it up and dump into sterile container and start wash process.

Here's a shot of some WPL 568 Saison Blend that I washed after the stout photos. There was a ton of foamy yeast(?) when I added the sterile water to the fermentor which I couldn't get rid of so it ended up in the jar. Thinking it might be some top floc yeast?

I used two tubes of the Saison yeast in a 2L starter with O2 and stir plate. When I pulled it to wash, I ended up with 5 of these small jars and probably tossed another 4. This stuff looks really pure, at least the stuff at the bottom. It seems crazy that I get so much yeast. Is this normal?

 

[wasitim]

So @khawk95, you're saying open the conical and skim the krausen? I know some breweries have always done open fermentation, but I thought opening the top was a no-no for the most part.

 

[khawk95]

If you are sanitary, you can open the top and skim the yeast. Don't do it unless you are 100% confident in your sanitation.


Roed Haus Brewery