Denny’s totally right - keep it fun and exciting. If you sanitize properly and keep your fermentation temps down you’ll make beer that’s at least drinkable, if not better. Learn from some of the excellent brewers here and you’ll do better than that. Good luck!
One more thing - be sure to write what the yeast strain is and when it was harvested. As you brew more often, you might have a few samples stored and the easy reference will be appreciated!
I harvested my yeast successfully this morning into 2, 1 qt. mason jars.
It looks like I have over 400 ml. of slurry in each jar. This is way too much for a 5 gallon batch right? :o
Pic below for reference!
Yeah, probably more than enough for a batch in each jar, but IMO not a big deal. Make sure not to screw those lids down too tight. Even in the fridge it will keep slowly fermenting and you don’t want pressure to build up and the jars to explode.
Thanks for the tip. Just put them in the fridge and loosened the caps up a bit. I had initially tightened them very tight!
+1 to that. You can always just cover with foil if you don’t want to worry about how tight the lids are.
Also, once it completely settles, you’ll have a nice dense bunch at the bottom of each jar. Just guessing by a glance at your pic those will probably be closer to 250ml each. You can do the yeast calculator route if you want to figure it out exactly, but as Denny said each one of those is probably plenty of yeast for a 5G batch. Think about it this way – even if half of the stuff you’re seeing is not yeast (trub, hop matter, etc), that’s still a lot more “stuff” than what comes in a single White Labs vial.
The yeast will compact as it cools. I normally get 200-300 ml of thick slurry from a 1.040-1.050 batch.
Perfect, i’m hoping for close to 200 ml. 
Already see it compacting.
When it’s time to pitch is there anything I need to know? Do I just pour in the entire jar, or only the thickest slurry?
Thanks!
Pour off the leftover beer on top, leaving just enough to swirl the slurry up so you can pour it.
For what it is worth, I had a two year old slurry in the back of the fridge in a plastic tub with a loose lid and a paper towel as a “filter-like” medium with an inch or so of beer on top of the yeast cake. Other than some dead yeast at the topmost part of the slurry, it was without any infection and as I pored it out to make room for a fresh slurry to take its place, I was amazed that it smelled so fresh. I wouldn’t re-pitch it, of course, but I would not hesitate making a starter using it in that condition. I would also say that when handling yeast - try to have everything to be used in the process all laid out and work quickly with open containers containing yeast to avoid airborne contaminants getting in the medium.
There is nothing worse than discovering a defect on a beer from which a slurry was harvested and already re-pitched, because then you have two batches affected…I’ve learned the hard way. Some defects don’t show up right away and get intolerable with time. It doesn’t prevent me from re-pitching, it just makes me cautious about cleaning, sanitizing and transferring.
Right on the money Stevie. 200ml combined between both jars once the yeast compacted in the fridge.
I should use both of these on my next batch, correct?
Any need for a starter?
Don’t use both - if you are re-pitching within about 2 weeks then maybe up to a whole jar, but really just a third or so of the total harvested for ales. Half for lagers in that time frame. If more time passes, then more yeast should be pitched or make a starter from the harvested yeast.