Rinsing Yeast (in Pictures)

[Malted]

I use a device like this (meat syringe) that can be disassembled for cleaning and sterilising. It has it's limits in terms of the size of jar you can suck from.

 

[Yob]

Okay Im still trying to get this sussed like many of us...

I poured 500ml of water into my fermenter at the end of bottling and tipped this into a jar. After 15 mins here is the result.

View attachment 54821


Seemed too thick from what Ive read here so I shook the crap out of this and split it into 2 jars and added about 500mls of water to each jar.

After 15 mins the jars looked totally different. The jar on the left had a nice layer of wort, cloudy yeast and a hop and trub layer on the bottom, while the jar on the right seemed to just have wort, hops and trub even though I had shaken up the jar before splitting into two and adding water.

This pic shows both of them the next morning after being in the fridge ovenight. Would you agree there is no yeast in the jar on the right at all?

View attachment 54822

Both will have yeast in them, you dont have a lot of volume in the jar which will make separation difficult.

From your process above Truman you seem to be still missing one vital part.

500ml of Cooled boiled water into the FV is correct.. instead of colleting a whole jar, the process should be to collect 1/4 of a jar (or say 200ml) and further dilute to say 800ml - 1lt and then you will get a decent separation.

All of those liquids look to be fairy un-diluted mate.

Yob

 

[Truman42]

Both will have yeast in them, you dont have a lot of volume in the jar which will make separation difficult.

From your process above Truman you seem to be still missing one vital part.

500ml of Cooled boiled water into the FV is correct.. instead of colleting a whole jar, the process should be to collect 1/4 of a jar (or say 200ml) and further dilute to say 800ml - 1lt and then you will get a decent separation.

All of those liquids look to be fairy un-diluted mate.

Yob

Ok so I should be splitting my slurry out of the ferm into 3 or 4 jars with 200mls approx in each and then adding 800-1000mls of water to this? Will give that a try and see how it goes. Thanks heaps.

 

[Yob]

Ok so I should be splitting my slurry out of the ferm into 3 or 4 jars with 200mls approx in each and then adding 800-1000mls of water to this? Will give that a try and see how it goes. Thanks heaps.

Yes!!!

Thats why the 1.5lt V8 Jars Rock... you can get 300ml-350ml of slurry into them and easily dilute to 1.2lt and get almost a full pitch from a single rinse of the jar... almost... I generally rinse each V8 Jar twice to achieve my harvested yeast of about 100ml compact slurry... depending on how thin the solution is I may need to take a third rinse into a second jar... in fact this happens quite often as I tend to thin mine out quite alot...

I actually stuffed the last one up and only collected 50ml not my usual 100ml because it was too thin.

Yob

 

[SJW]

For those fellas who are still trying to get a grip of this yeast washing thing, just a note, its not nessasary to rinse the yeast until there is just pure yeast and fresh water left. While this is a fine way to preserve the yeast for longer periods, I have done fine for many years by just doing the following.
With a new Wyeast I make sure I am doing a lower type gravity brew for that style and I make sure I do an extra litre or so. After the boil I make sure all the trub has dropped out and only transfer the clear wort to the fermenter. Then when it is done I drain as much beer out as possible, add some cold clear water and swish around and then drian into several swing top 500ml bottles. It does not need to be any harder than that as it makes no difference to the next brews with the same yeast.
Come brew day, Just tip off the clear and top up with some wort from the next brew before you transfer it to the fermenter and she will be fired up within the hour.

Steve

 

[MaltyHops]

...
This pic shows both of them the next morning after being in the fridge ovenight. ...

I think leaving overnight (esp. in fridge) is too long - and I do all the yeast
rinsing and separation at room temperature and only put into fridge when
all done.

I find that after a good shake of a well diluted trub, it takes about half an
hour for the heavier trub to settle and I separate that from what's still in
suspension at that point, which while will still containing some very fine trub,
will take about 6 to 9 hours to separate into a layer of yeast/fine trub, a
layer of sill suspended yeast and a layer of clear beer. At that point, the beer
can be poured off and repeat the process depending on how high a yeast to
liquid percentage you want.

TIP - Often I get a layer yeast sitting on a layer of trub under clear beer and
if the beer is gentlyly poured away without stirring the yeast too much, the
yeast can then be stirred up by keeping the jar upright and gently rotating
the jar back and forth.

This will be enough to stir up the layer of yeast without disturbing the trub too
much - the stirred up yeast can then be poured into a another "more refined"
container for final rinsing/refining.

 

[thylacine]

Wolfy,

Thanks for the descriptive yeast reharvesting alternatives you have provided. I really like your 'top cropping' yeast thread. eg. harvesting active, viable yeast without trub; and I suspect ending up with more fermented wort, as one fills the fermenter to 'intentional overflow' levels. Good onya...

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=54164

 

[Truman42]

So I tipped of the beer and added another 600mls of water to each jar. This is what I ended up with the next morning.

So what happened to the hops and trub I had in the previous photos? It looks like I just have yeast thats settled at the bottom and yeast still in suspension??

 

[Yob]

So I tipped of the beer and added another 600mls of water to each jar. This is what I ended up with the next morning.

So what happened to the hops and trub I had in the previous photos? It looks like I just have yeast thats settled at the bottom and yeast still in suspension??

View attachment 54851

A goodly proportion of that will still be trub mate... unless you have separated it... those 600ml's look different to my eye... are you sure of those volumes? You cant have tipped all the beer out of the liquid would be clearer... Not that it matters, just makes eyeing the separartion easier..

tip off the liquid. Fill those damn jars to about 3/4 full and shake. If you say those jars have 600ml in them, 800 ml will fit easy. (trub to water ratio MINIMUM 1 to 4... more is better)

leave for 30 mins (at room temps)

Pour off the liquid from the top into another jar leaving anything that settles or compacts in those 30 mins behind.

Repeat.

Place in fridge to settle.

Get some contact and mark those jars at 50ml increments to enable you to calculate how much compact yeast is in there. (See pictures earlier in thread)

Yob

 

[bignath]

On the right track truman. To me it looks like your nearly there. If it was me, id leave it a bit more time to see if that liquid layer clears up a bit more, then decant it, and add more water.

Looks like its only a rinse away from being about right.

 

[Truman42]

A goodly proportion of that will still be trub mate... unless you have separated it... those 600ml's look different to my eye... are you sure of those volumes? You cant have tipped all the beer out of the liquid would be clearer... Not that it matters, just makes eyeing the separartion easier..

tip off the liquid. Fill those damn jars to about 3/4 full and shake. If you say those jars have 600ml in them, 800 ml will fit easy. (trub to water ratio MINIMUM 1 to 4... more is better)

leave for 30 mins (at room temps)

Pour off the liquid from the top into another jar leaving anything that settles or compacts in those 30 mins behind.

Repeat.

Place in fridge to settle.

Get some contact and mark those jars at 50ml increments to enable you to calculate how much compact yeast is in there. (See pictures earlier in thread)

Yob

I did measure 600mls in each one but the one on the left is a 2 litre goon and on the right is a mason jar which is narrower. And I probably did leave some beer in the jar.

I will give it another crack as you suggest and see how I go. Thanks heaps for the help Yob.

 

[iralosavic]

Thanks for all the advice. I ended up starting things off using a plastic pasta container and then got hold of a tall glass cylinder jar for $2 from kmart when I was there. Both worked a treat and after a lot of separating, chilling, bringing back to room temperature and repeating I ended up with this:

From this, in case you've just tuned in:

According to Mr Malty, I don't really have enough slurry to work with for a decent gravity lager - unless I slide it all the way over to thickest slurry (and while it is very thick, I imagine it could be thicker) - but at least I saved this lot of s189 from the drain and won't have to spend a fortune on things I don't currently need from CB just to justify the shipping cost for their 5kg minimum.

 

[nala]

I use a device like this (meat syringe) that can be disassembled for cleaning and sterilising. It has it's limits in terms of the size of jar you can suck from.



View attachment 54827

Has anyone tried one of these Turkey basters for sucking the layers from the settlement
vessel ?
I bought mine from Red Dot $2 works a treat and very easy to sterilise.
Great thread, amongst the best !

 

[iralosavic]

Has anyone tried one of these Turkey basters for sucking the layers from the settlement
vessel ?
I bought mine from Red Dot $2 works a treat and very easy to sterilise.
Great thread, amongst the best !

View attachment 54965

You must be working with fairly small volumes. Once diluted, my layer volume would be around 300ml each on average, which would take many runs with a turkey baster. I got my baster form Coles for $2 and it has served me well for sample taking purposes.

 

[jakethesnake559]

Awesome post Wolfy, looks like you have helped soooo many brewers save some cash!!
We all owe you a beer I think :icon_cheers:.

Yesterday I tried harvesting yeast for the first time.
Got 2 nice jars of slurry which separated out into the 3 layers over the course of the day (I was brewing at the same time, so worked out well).
Tipped off the top layer and poured the yeast layers into a separate jars.
Left it overnight and came out this morning to find it had formed 3 layers again (as expected).
But I could see some little balls of yeast starting to separate themselves from the yeast layer and float up into the wort layer (like a lava lamp).

Is this a bad sign?? Or yeast just doing yeasty things?

Anyway, I'm not going to wash it any further, just going to re-pitch one of the jars today (it's a similar brew, so not worried about hop flavour etc).

So can I just shake up the jar and tip it into my fermenter?
And is there any clear way to tell if the yeast is OK (ie. smell?)?

Would appreciate any help/opinions.

Cheers,
Jake.

 

[Wolfy]

But I could see some little balls of yeast starting to separate themselves from the yeast layer and float up into the wort layer (like a lava lamp).
...
Anyway, I'm not going to wash it any further, just going to re-pitch one of the jars today (it's a similar brew, so not worried about hop flavour etc).

So can I just shake up the jar and tip it into my fermenter?
And is there any clear way to tell if the yeast is OK (ie. smell?)?

Most likely this is due to some of the yeast still fermenting something and the CO2 making those 'balls' a little more buoyant than the rest of the yeast.
The only real way to tell is to taste it once it has fermented (such as a starter) however if your previous batched turned out fine, and you used (as close to) sterile procedures when washing your yeast, it is unlikely that it would get infected.

 

[jakethesnake559]

Cheers mate.
It's going in !!
Jake.

 

[thylacine]

Awesome post Wolfy, looks like you have helped soooo many brewers save some cash!!
We all owe you a beer I think :icon_cheers:.

Yesterday I tried harvesting yeast for the first time.
Got 2 nice jars of slurry which separated out into the 3 layers over the course of the day (I was brewing at the same time, so worked out well).
Tipped off the top layer and poured the yeast layers into a separate jars.
Left it overnight and came out this morning to find it had formed 3 layers again (as expected).
But I could see some little balls of yeast starting to separate themselves from the yeast layer and float up into the wort layer (like a lava lamp).

Is this a bad sign?? Or yeast just doing yeasty things?

Anyway, I'm not going to wash it any further, just going to re-pitch one of the jars today (it's a similar brew, so not worried about hop flavour etc).

So can I just shake up the jar and tip it into my fermenter?
And is there any clear way to tell if the yeast is OK (ie. smell?)?


Another yeast harvesting technique (link below) I am trying next. eg appears easy to do and results in 'clean', active yeast.

http://karlisbeer.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/...rom-carboy.html

Cheers...



Would appreciate any help/opinions.

Cheers,
Jake.

 

[7roy]

This is a great post, I'm going to try this method with the remains of a lager I just finished, so I will have enough (free) S-04 yeast to pitch closer to 12 degrees next time, instead of just one pack of yeast which doesn't seem to cope with that temp very well.

 

[thylacine]

This is a great post, I'm going to try this method with the remains of a lager I just finished, so I will have enough (free) S-04 yeast to pitch closer to 12 degrees next time, instead of just one pack of yeast which doesn't seem to cope with that temp very well.
[/quote]




If you are interested in top cropping, you may wish to do some further Google searching. eg. not taking/taking the first krausen' skin' ; best for ale & wheat yeasts- ie. the top fermenting strains (or not...)

cheers