short term yeast storage

Ingredients
1

Hi All. I am bottling a batch today and brewing another tomorrow. I would like to use the US05 yeast cake for tomorrow’s batch. After racking into the bottling bucket, I plan to put the lid back on the fermenter bucket and put it in the fridge until tomorrow afternoon. I don’t really want to take the time to put it in a mason jar for such a short period of time. I don’t see any issues with this as long as I keep the yeast away from the open air for too long…

Anything I should be worried about? What temp would be best for the yeast for a bit over 24 hours?

2

That should be fine as long as you’re diligent with your sanitation. Store it as cold as possible.

Are you planning on pitching the entire yeast cake? If the second batch is of similar volume and gravity, you’d want to pitch about 1/4 of the yeast.

3

When I was kegging I would just dump the new batch onto the entire yeast cake. I don’t have enough time to bottle and brew tomorrow so this is my alternative.

As you mention, I should just harvest the entire yeast cake and use part of it but laziness may prevail…

4

If you put it in the fridge, make sure you give it enough time to warm up before you pitch.

That’s quite a bit more liquid than a regular smack pack / tube, so just take note and pull it a few hours before you would normally take your pack/tube out of the fridge.

5

Thanks guys. I decided to just harvest the whole slurry in a mason jar and pitch a portion of it. So if I was to harvest 2 cups of slurry, I would need about 1/2 cup for a 5 gallon batch? I will get on mrmalty to check it out…

6

I do not think this is necessary.

7

I agree.  I stopped warming up the yeast many years and hundreds of batches ago.  I think it works better that way.  At least, it doesn’t work any worse.

8

I put yeast into a ziplock and then into the fridge.  Cold yeast pitched into wort chilled down to or below pitching temp seems to work fine for me.

9

I harvested about 3 cups of yeast into a mason jar and placed in the fridge overnight. Yeast settled out, I siphoned off beer from top, and pitched 1/2 cup. Airlock is just starting to slow down after 4 days or so…