So I have a couple quart jars of harvested yeast slurry from a batch of irish red sitting in the fridge. I was thinking of washing it as it has a lot of hop trub and gunk in there but this yeast does not want to de-floculate once settled. I am thinking that if, instead of distilled water I were to use some simple extract wort as a first step I could get all the healthy live cells back into solution and then let just the trub and dead cells settle, then after a day in the wort pour the liquid portion into a new jar and keep that as a starter. does this make sense? the plan is to use it in a big wheat wine.
Even in the presence of maltose and other sugars, this yeast seems to flocculate. You can give it a try and report back, but when I tried to de-flocculate this yeast with extract to count it under the microscope I did not have much success.
Kai
Are you worried that much about the trub? How much of an effect do you think it will have? I reuse saved slurry all the time unless I’ve dry hopped.
Dave
yeah it’s chunky alright. Sounds like you have tried what I was intending so perhaps I will not waste my time and energy. Out of curiosity though, and this is probably a question for Tom S., is there a way to counteract the substances on the yeast surface that cause floculation? enzymatic? environmental?
Not really worried about the trub to much, just thought I would give it a try. I have also just pitched reused yeast without problems in the past. I will probably make a starter out of a portion of the cake.
Starter sounds like the way to go…
Dave