Harvested this wlp 001 from a pale ale last Friday. This is my first time and I’m about to use it to make a starter for an IPA I’m doing Friday. In this picture, you will see a very small light colored layer between the beer and the darker yeast(?) layer at the bottom. Is this light layer the only viable yeast from what I harvested?
How did you harvest? Swirl and pour? Or did you wash it?
I swirl and pour. I also don’t do a starter if my harvest is fairly fresh. I decant the beer and pitch a cup to a cup and a half of the harvest. (Amount depending on OG or Lager)
When I restart I only use about 100 ml of the harvest in a 2000ml stir start
I rinsed it then transferred to one gallon container. Decanted beer then transferred yeast off trub to one quart container. Put in fridge. I thought people always make starters with harvested yeast. Especially if you want it to go farther. But I don’t know that’s why I’m asking the questions.
It’s hard to tell from the picture but I think that middle layer is yeast and the rest is just trub material. The volume of trub you got in the jar indicates you didn’t decant enough steps and/or you did not let it settle long enough before decanting.
When you do that rinse process it’s all about temperature and time. The warmer the trub/water mix the longer it takes for the junk you don’t want to drop out. You need to let it sit long enough that the stuff you don’t want drops out but the yeast hasn’t started to settle out. The more trub you start with the longer you need to rest before you decant the liquid to another container but generally you should be resting around 15-20 minutes the first time or two before you move the liquid into its final destination.
I found washing rinsing to be more trouble than its worth.
It looks good to me though. Starters fine just don’t over pitch it. As fresh as it is I’d decant, and pitch the needed amount as is.
+1. I pretty much only make starters when starting with a new vial or smack pack, because I time my brew days for when another beer is ready to be racked from primary to keg. Plus, a lot of times I will pitch from the vial or smack pack directly into a small batch and just step up the batch size successively to get to my standard 10 gallon batch. Just something to consider…
Yes, that layer is your viable yeast. Decant the top off, pour that in to another jar and don’t worry if a little trub follows. You have 3-4 weeks to make another beer until you should probably make a starter. I sometimes go up to 2 months depending how good of a separation and wash I got.
Dave
Holy crap! That’s only about 50-75 ml of yeast. To do a 1.060 beer Mr. Malty says I need about 250 ml. So do I just pitch 250 ml of everything that’s in the jar?
After the rinsing process I transferred it from a 6-gal carboy to a one gallon glass jar. I let it settle and stratify for about an hour. The jars I used were sanitized in boiling water the night before, so the water wasn’t warm. The water and yeast/trub were about the same temperature (65-70F).
After the one gallon glass jar settled for about another hour, I transferred to the one quart jar in the picture. Then I put that in the fridge because I didn’t see anymore obvious trub at that time. So what is in the picture has been crashing for about 84 hrs.
Mr. Malty says you need 250ml of yeast slurry, not yeast. You have separated the yeast from the slurry. If you did a decent job washing you have plenty of yeast for a 1.060 beer.
Dave
How long the slurry is ‘good’ without a starter is based on volume and viability. You can wait 3-4 weeks as long as you have enough slurry.
I usually take the Mr. Malty calcs as gospel when it comes to slurry age/viability, even if they are a bit conservative.
Personally, if its been longer than a week, I’ll make a small starter to boost viability and reduce lag/cleanup time, especially if its a finicky yeast or a lightly flavored beer (Kolsch, helles, Pils, etc).
Excellent clarification. Thanks Dave!
So if it’s a week from when I harvested and it’s a WLP001 slurry going from a pale ale to a heavily hopped IPA, chances are it’s perfect for the job?
Looking good! 8)
http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/984
Give this a listen. According to Palmer, a thin layer of white on top of washed yeast is yeast hulls. The healthy yeast is between that and trub at the bottom.
Thanks Jim! Good link. So according to Jamil, he decants the real light layer of yeast hulls and proteins before pitching. So I have quite a bit of good yeast it looks like. I’ll probably split it up to smaller aliquots for future batches.
No problem.
In my opinion it all depends on what you want to do. You could harvest one cake, then make several starters from it, so long as you go through it relatively quickly. But I just harvest and repitch, harvest and repitch. I think I can do that about 20 times with my system and sanitation without ill effects. But I usually repitch about 4 times, get bored and change styles. Though I’ve really fallen in love with my 1728 and 2112 so they may stick around.
I have been running 1728 in a mild and an IPA. I repitch the mild to both and toss the IPA. Keeps the dry hop pellets out of the next batch.
I think my methods are sound for my way. I’m certain it could be far more technical. I’m just avoiding gross deviations from good basic yeast handling. I use fresh yeast, not overpitched, not underpitched. But I’m not OCD about it either.
Have fun
How much of a lag should I expect for one week old harvested yeast that was pitched without making a starter? Usually I’ll see blow off within 12-18 hrs when I make a starter. It’s been about 16 hrs and I pitched with the yeast and the wort around 68-70 F. BTW mrmalty said I needed about 300 ml of slurry for my 12 gal (adjusted for various reasons) batch so I pitched about 175 ml in each 6 gal carboy.
16 hours is nothing to worry about. Next time I world pitch a bit cooler though, like around 64 or lower. When those yeast take off the temp us going to jump right at the wrong time for off flavor development. Give it some time.
Thanks Mort. I’m in Florida and this is the first winter I’ve used my plate chiller so the pitching temp fluctuated between 62-76 F as we tried to get things dialed in. The fermentation chamber is about 62 F which may be the reason for the slow start. White Labs suggests 68-72 F until fermentation begins so since this was harvested white labs I just stuck with the same guidelines.
Btw, nice kraeusen at 36 hrs with fermentation fridge at about 62 F.