I recently grew up a pitch of Wyeast Canadian/Belgian from a bottle I brewed last year. I’m a big fan of the yeast and it’s a seasonal strain that’s not scheduled for release any time soon, so I decided to keep it going for a while. I decided to save the last ounce or so of yeast slurry and add some of the final “runnings” I set aside from the Belgian Pale Ale I was brewing to restart the starter.
So now I have a starter with a huge amount of trub - approximately 3 times as deep as the yeast slurry was in my last starter (and the yeast hasn’t even started to floc out yet). Has anyone done an all-grain starter and run into this before? Any idea how I should handle the trub? I’m not growing a starter for a particular batch at the moment, but I just wanted to stockpile some relatively fresh slurry in the fridge for use later this fall.
I was thinking of either:
A) Wash the yeast to separate it from the trub, then store in a loosely closed mason jar in the fridge until I’m ready to use it
or
B) Just say “screw it” and dump the slurry and trub all together into a mason jar in hopes that the layers will separate and I can pour mostly yeast slurry off the top when I go to pitch.
I’ve always just said screw it and pitched it all in trub and everything when working from saved yeast. But I am not terribly concerned with trub as I have not seen any negative effects.
Same here. It’s never affected the quality of the beer (and I’ve done it both ways, with no difference). Even through my typical 5-8 generations of repitching saved yeast, it has never affected the finished beer.
Assuming you did everything else correctly along the way sanitation-wise, just dump it in and don’t sweat it…
+1, as long as it is reasonably fresh, still; otherwise make another starter from it. For ease, I assume about half the cels die off per month (half by the end of 1 month, 3/4 by the end of 2 months and 7/8 by the end of 3 months). After 2 months, I would recommend a starter, unless you are brewing a smaller batch.
I would wash the yeast if you’re worried about the trub. You can dump it all into mason jars and it will separate but you’ll have a hard time pouring the yeast out of the jar without the trub coming with it. However, I think you’ll be ok just dumping everything in the jars and pitching all the solid content, both yeast and trub.
I’m with the just dump it all in people. Although you could wash it if the trub bothered you. It seems like a extra step that isn’t really necessary to me.