I’ve never had reason to use the yeast washing procedure until now. Due to recent changes in my brewing process, I collect a large amount of trub in my fermenter.
My questions: After dumping the trub/yeast from the fermenter into a 1gallon jar, how long should I let it settle out before pouring off the viable yeast? Should I refrigerate it during the settling process? Would it be safe to say that the more trub in the jar, the longer I should let it settle out? Thanks.
Generally, once you poured it into the gallon jug, give it 20 -30 minutes. Most of the junk will have settled on the bottom but you’ll still have way cloudy liquid above that. Pour off that liquid into as many jars as it takes and refrigerate them. The next day, each jar will have a layer of relatively clean yeast on the bottom. Decant the liquid off the top and collect and pitch the resulting slurry.
Thanks for that. I’m surprised at the 20-30min settling period…Seems long, but what do I know.
I’ve let it settle out for 24 hours in moderately cold weather then poured it off. The yeast I got from decanting looked very good, but there wasn’t all that much there. When I do it again I’d probably go more with what hokerer posted above and settle for a little extra trub.
I tried washing yeast several times and, IMO, I see no advantage to washing the yeast on the homebrew level. Just an extra step that could compromise sanitation. Just keep most of the hops and trub in the kettle and collect and pitch part of your slurry and you will be fine.
I follow the same procedure. I use the 200 micron bucket screens to filter hop and break material and I always end up with clean yeast cakes. The rinsing process isn’t worth the additional risk or effort in my opinion. I’ve never been able to tell the difference between rinsed and bulk harvested yeast in the final product.
I also am tilting back to the minimal wash approach…rack as much GOOD beer as possible,add a little sterilized water (8oz) swirl around and in a couple of minutes withdraw 16 oz of liquid,cover loosely and into frig.I am right now building a starter from a 4 mnth old capture and it’s doing well.
Sure there’s an advantage. It’s great to be able to have yeast on hand just like hops when you want to brew a batch and not have to pay 6 bucks for a smack pack when you can pay 6 bucks once and get 16 batches, at least, out of one pack. It makes a lot of sense on the homebrew level.
I plan to start washing and reusing my yeast as well. I have a smack pack of 1272 in the fridge I plan to reuse over and over and over. That’s good yeast.
Majorvices isn’t saying don’t reuse yeast. He’s saying he doesn’t see the value in washing it as opposed to just collecting and saving a part of the yeast cake without washing it.
+1! I do as Majorvices. Like him, I reached the conclusion that washing is a PITA for no appreciable benefit.
Another +2 for a PITA and added chance for contamination.
Okay, I see now and I agree. I misunderstood it before.
when you have a pack of yeast you like you can always save some when you make your starter and use it to propagate a fresh line. similarly, you can make two starters from one pack and propagate up one for brewing and one for storing. then you will always have a “clean” source of your favorite yeast
Yes, I’m a huge proponent of reusing yeast. Just not washing yeast. 
I generally re-use my yeast.
I’m curious, assuming that the starter is the first generation, how many generations do others use?
3-4 for me. Sometimes I also just collect the slurry and make several starters off that slurry on my stir plate.
At least 3, often 5, sometimes more.
probably half dozen off a single starter. but i am still a fan of propagating/culturing part of what you buy so you will always have a first or second generation to use as a starter. similar, if not easier, than culturing from sediment of a production beer.
When I get a new vial, I usually make a starter, and split it into two bottles. One goes into storage, and I’ll take the other one, pitch it, and pitch the remaining yeast cake maybe 3 or 4 times. After that I just get too nervous about contamination. And quite often I want to make a different beer that requires a different yeast. When I’m ready to go back to that original yeast, I’ll take that second starter that went into storage, build that up and depending on how energetic I feel, I’ll save some of that into another bottle that’ll go into storage and pitch the rest, take that 3 or 4 times, etc etc. Needless to say, I don’t buy yeast very often.
However, I realized that I had a couple of bottles of wlp007 in the yeast fridge. I haven’t used that in a while, it went into the fridge August. Hmm. Probably dead, but heck, let’s try to build it back up. Poured off the liquid, shook up the yeast on the bottom, poured it into a flask with a little bit of basic wort. Sat it on the stir plate over night. Next morning, looks nice and cloudy, was about to wash the yeast (since it had been sitting around for quite a while and there’s probably tons of dead yeast in there that I didn’t want to contribute to off flavors if I pitched it) and took a whiff … WHOOOO. That isn’t yeast that’s growing in there. If you’ve ever done the off flavor tasting kit from Siebel, this is straight from the vial of ethyl acetate. If the girlfriend was around I would’ve had her put her finger in it and I’m guessing the nail polish would’ve dissolved right off. I’m not entirely sure what causes it, but needless to say, it went down the sink. And i’ve sanitized my equipment. Twice.
Lesson: If it doesn’t smell like yeast. Don’t use it. Six bucks for a fresh vial is worth not ruining a $20 batch of beer.
Actual repitching, I’ve only gone three generations. I just don’t brew enough to do it very often.
Propagating from a slurry though, I’ve re-used my 1056 culture 11 times so far, generally with several months in between. I don’t consider that a new “generation” each time though, since it’s only fermenting 1.030ish starter wort.