Easy yeast recovery

[trustyrusty]

Hey guys
Got a simple yeast recovery process.
I read something about don’t bother with washing. For all you experts I would imagine if you wanted long term storage it might not be good. What would the side effects be?

All I do with last dregs swirl around of brew and add to 3 600 ml bottles. Fill and squeeze till air is out. Leave over night and then empty cleaner liquid off the tops and make 1 bottle. Will be my next yeast... Do you reckon this is enough
for a batch ...??

 

[kadmium]

I'd invest in some mason jars, and wash the yeast properly. You also probably still want to fire it up as a starter id it goes more than a month or so. In which case you might as well harvest from the starters for simplicity.

If you don't wash, all the trub and hops in there will spoil your yeast

 

[trustyrusty]

Thanks - if I use this in the next week or 2 is that an issue?

 

[kadmium]

Nah man she'll be right. The best way to wash yeast in my opinion is to settle out the trub.

Swirl up the yeast cake with some sterile water (boiled and cooled not talking laboratory grade lol)

Pour entire lot into a big jar or bottle thats sanitised. Let settle for 20m and the trub and hop material should settle to the bottom while the yeast is held in suspension in the liquid. If you see a white creamy layer forming over the brownish trub, decant the liquid and the yeast layer into new container.

Let the liquid you decanted off settle in the fridge. You should see a clean creamy layer. That's yeast.

Problem with keeping the lot is its full of hop and trub and only a little yeast. Just give it a good smell before using it.

 

[butisitart]

i use a horse syringe to hoover the yeast layer out. hold the syringe about half a cm above the cream layer and with a bit of practice you can take pretty much all yeast and not much else.
available at vets, especially around racetrack suburbs

 

[trustyrusty]

i use a horse syringe to hoover the yeast layer out. hold the syringe about half a cm above the cream layer and with a bit of practice you can take pretty much all yeast and not much else.
available at vets, especially around racetrack suburbs

Thanks so your let all settle for a few days? how much liquid do you start with.. and versus how much yeast you finish with?
thanks

 

[butisitart]

Thanks so your let all settle for a few days? how much liquid do you start with.. and versus how much yeast you finish with?
thanks

no, virtually same process as kadmium above, except i only add a bit of water if there isn't enough wort still in there.
so, fermenter dregs to moccona jar, swirl, and when you can see the yeast layer just starting to form, hit it with the hoover. this method works best with hi- flocculants, which is what i usually use anyway. normally i'd come out with 180-200ml of yeastie liquid. after that settles in the fridge and i've actually got a yeast layer (i usually leave that till the next day), then i'll decant off enough of what is now pretty clear water to leave eg 100ml including yeast in the bottom. swirl that up to consistency and re-pack yeast down to 2X50ml containers.
so leave enough mls to fit into whatever number of small containers, and calculate it so that you're not leaving oxygen headspace in the small containers.
if it's low flocculant, you're better to just decant all the liquid fairly quickly as per kadmium above, but i still do the repack down to small jars after the yeast settles (a couple of days).
hope that makes sense. having said all that, i'm probably ditching the entire rinse process for the easier overstarter method on my next new yeast pack.

 

[trustyrusty]

After reading this, I realized I have mostly likely chucked the yeast out and kept the trub and hops LOL

 

[trustyrusty]

Gus while I have you attention, I have some old weetbix that needs to be thrown out....

Do you think I could make a mix of weetbix and sugar plus all the bits of yeast and trub left over to make some new

yeast to collect. I might warm/ partial boil the weetbix to sugars out like grain....

Maybe a good wort for a beer lol...

cheers

 

[kadmium]

In short, no.

In long format: Weetbix won't have any diastetic power to convert itself into sugars. And plain table sugar needs to be inverted if you're going to use it to brew (generally) as it needs to be broken down for the yeast to easily process rather than yeast having to break down first.

You really should use Light Dry Malt Extract for making starters. I guess you could make a starter with plain sugar, but it's not best practice. Like I said, you would need to invert it by simmering it for 30 minutes.

You also want an SG of 1.037 for a starter, which could be hard working out by inverting sugar.

DME is perfect because you use 100g per litre. So 150g topped up to 1.5L including the DME gives you 1.037 SG. If you're going to harvest yeast you will need the starter equipment to make a proper go of it.

 

[trustyrusty]

righto..thanks next time I make a brew I will do properly..easier...

 

[butisitart]

Gus while I have you attention, I have some old weetbix that needs to be thrown out....

Do you think I could make a mix of weetbix and sugar plus all the bits of yeast and trub left over to make some new

yeast to collect. I might warm/ partial boil the weetbix to sugars out like grain....

Maybe a good wort for a beer lol...

cheers

old weetbix and maybe some vegemite for a yeast starter?? Lol

 

[Osangar]

I left about 500ml of beer in the primary, and shook it like a British nanny. then popped it into a clean mason jar. re-pitched into the next beer (one after next specifically) after about a month. it lived in the fridge just fine, and did separate a reasonable amount. when I re-pitched, it was simply a dump of the amber liquid top layer and the rest into the fermentor, then add the beer (from the cube). workes a treat.
yeast was S-04. and the second time around the beer is better than the first, and the second is better still. not tried a thrid re-pitch.

 

[AMcgreg]

A bit new, never thought to reuse the yeast. Is it only yeast you get this way or some of trub ? Or is trub the yeast and some other stuff?

 

[kadmium]

Hey mate. Trub is the generic term for the crsp that settled to the bottom of both a boil kettle when you're done boiling and also what settles to the bottom of the fermenter.

Trub in the fermenter is made up of yeast, but mainly its proteins and hop debris that settles out during fermentation.

The yeast usually stays suspended in the liquid before it falls (floculates) to the bottom. How strongly it falls out of suspension is it's flocculation strength (usually displayed as a %)

Generally, the trub is far heavier than the yeast. So what you would do to wash the yeast is once the fermenter is empty, swirl up all the trub and yeast, pop in a jar to settle out for 30m and then decant the liquid which will be yeast and beer.

Throw out the layer of sediment that settled out. You then let this sit in a fridge (cold helps yeast floc) and you get a nice creamy white layer of yeast. Trub will be grey/green/brown.

 

[Reveirs]

I've cooked up old weet-bix (and corn flakes) to add extra body to extract brews. Also stale (but not mouldy) bread, especially sour dough or baguettes.

 

[Osangar]

A bit new, never thought to reuse the yeast. Is it only yeast you get this way or some of trub ? Or is trub the yeast and some other stuff?

this is a topic that can generate much debate. and no real answers. but, I tend to err on the side of ease and caution. trub is fine, it is unlikely to affect your beer, within reason. I leave my yeast in beer and trub (collectively known as 'slurry') as it is already sanitised, and the beer has made a little home in it already. you can wash your yeast, but then you are opening the door to potential issues (if you are not super clean and confident of the process) and the gain is negligible unless you are storing the yeast for longer than 6 months. save the slurry, repitch into the next beer and save on the worry. p.s a mason jar is your friend for this activity, as is a schnappe bottle.

 

[peterlonz]

Hey mate. Trub is the generic term for the crsp that settled to the bottom of both a boil kettle when you're done boiling and also what settles to the bottom of the fermenter.

Trub in the fermenter is made up of yeast, but mainly its proteins and hop debris that settles out during fermentation.

The yeast usually stays suspended in the liquid before it falls (floculates) to the bottom. How strongly it falls out of suspension is it's flocculation strength (usually displayed as a %)

Generally, the trub is far heavier than the yeast. So what you would do to wash the yeast is once the fermenter is empty, swirl up all the trub and yeast, pop in a jar to settle out for 30m and then decant the liquid which will be yeast and beer.

Throw out the layer of sediment that settled out. You then let this sit in a fridge (cold helps yeast floc) and you get a nice creamy white layer of yeast. Trub will be grey/green/brown.

this is a topic that can generate much debate. and no real answers. but, I tend to err on the side of ease and caution. trub is fine, it is unlikely to affect your beer, within reason. I leave my yeast in beer and trub (collectively known as 'slurry') as it is already sanitised, and the beer has made a little home in it already. you can wash your yeast, but then you are opening the door to potential issues (if you are not super clean and confident of the process) and the gain is negligible unless you are storing the yeast for longer than 6 months. save the slurry, repitch into the next beer and save on the worry. p.s a mason jar is your friend for this activity, as is a schnappe bottle.

I agree with this view of the "yeast recovery" subject. I re-use up to 3 times. Everything that is left in my fermentor which usually amounts to about a litre. If for some reason the recovered container becomes older than 3 months I dump it. Just to be on the safe side. BTW the brew utilising this recovered yeast starts quickly.

 

[butisitart]

A bit new, never thought to reuse the yeast. Is it only yeast you get this way or some of trub ? Or is trub the yeast and some other stuff?

there is always a certain joy in re-using yeast, namely that you're not coughing up $6-15 when you don't need to. go forth and multiply, there are plenty of good posts on here on ways to do it.
maybe 1 good starting step to see you on the path (this is NOT the only way), is
if you're emptying a fermenter and re-brewing at the same time, put half the trub (slurry) straight into the next fermenter.
use the kadmium steps listed above to rinse and store the other half in the fridge for next time