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washing yeast

Post #1 made 10 years ago
by jrodie
The recent threads on yeast starters, got me motivated to look in to washing yeast, something I have never done before. I watched a few youtube videos on it, and I have a basic plan. Any comments on it would be appreciated.

1. Pour about a half gallon of freshly boiled water on to yeast cake right after transferring beer from primary(maybe the secondary would be better, to get less trub and more pure yeast).

2. Swirl around the water and trub and pour into a bottling bucket.

3. From the bottling bucket spigot fill a one gallon jug with the water trub mixture.

4. Wait about an hour for the mixture in the jug to separate out and pour the top light brown part into jars (I'll use old spaghetti sauce jars). I'm wondering if you can wait too long on this step, because the yeast would eventually fall to the bottom with the trub?

5. Put the jars in the fridge, where the yeast will fall to the bottom, clearish liquid should be left in the rest of the jar.

6. Decant the liquid and make a starter out of the yeast before pitching to wort.

Is that about right?
Last edited by jrodie on 27 Mar 2015, 07:17, edited 1 time in total.

Post #2 made 10 years ago
by joshua
It was my experience that the Trub is heavier than yeast so You can Skip the Bottling Bucket and decant the yeast off the trub a few times and have nearly "Pure" yeast, ready to go to the Freezer or the starter.

Also, look over http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=1445 Harvesting yeast cake.

YMMV, IMHO.
Honest Officer, I swear to Drunk, I am Not God.
    • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From United States of America

Post #3 made 10 years ago
by safebrew222
Hey jrodie...

I have a couple comments for clarification sake.

Like Josh said above, you can skip the bottling bucket. Just another opportunity to introduce nasties into your yeast.

Any water needs to be boiled vigorously and cooled before using. You might think I'm stating the obvious... but you never know whose eyes are watching.

Any container that the yeast go into needs to be as sterile as possible. Preferably boiled for 20 minutes and let to cool.

The Yeast book recommends putting yeast solids in a sterile container with 4 times as much cool sterile (preboiled is fine) water, shaking vigorously, then waiting for the stratification of solids, creamy yeast and water, before decanting. You absolutely can get this done with the jug and jars. You should see the different layers begin to form immediately and you could decant after 10 minutes or so.

I would let the primary FV ferment out completely and drop clear before racking and harvesting. Harvesting from secondary or from a primary that hasn't finished fermenting out will have you harvesting only the most or least flocculent yeast respectively. Neither is ideal for our needs.

Hope this helps.

Jeff

Post #4 made 10 years ago
by jrodie
safebrew222 wrote:
The Yeast book recommends putting yeast solids in a sterile container with 4 times as much cool sterile (preboiled is fine) water
So does that mean if you have 1/2 gallon of trub, you should add 2 gallons of sterile water to start?
Last edited by jrodie on 28 Mar 2015, 06:44, edited 1 time in total.

Post #5 made 10 years ago
by joshua
Jrodie, I break the amount onto 4-5 containers, then Wash, Freeze, Dry, and store.

But, once it became Moldy, and needed to be tossed.
Honest Officer, I swear to Drunk, I am Not God.
    • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From United States of America

Post #6 made 10 years ago
by safebrew222
jrodie wrote:
safebrew222 wrote:
The Yeast book recommends putting yeast solids in a sterile container with 4 times as much cool sterile (preboiled is fine) water
So does that mean if you have 1/2 gallon of trub, you should add 2 gallons of sterile water to start?
Yes... that is the recommendation... the idea is to have enough liquid to break up the flocs and so allow the dead yeast and trub to fall faster. From personal experience, a 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 ratio would work just fine.
Last edited by safebrew222 on 28 Mar 2015, 07:45, edited 1 time in total.
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