Rookie error 3068

[kippertaylor]

Just had my first crack at yeast havesting but fear I've buggered it up, I was brewing a wyeast 3068 wheat beer and as I like saving money i thought I'd harvesting and using it again. Where I've gone wrong is I've added 220 grams of a sugar priming solution into my fermentor before transferring of yeast cake... Is this yeast harvesting experiment doomed for this batch?

 

[Reman]

Nope, should be all good. Most of the sugar should go into the bottles anyway.

I used to harvest off the trub, but it's a little painful and prone to infection, so I moved to creating a starter and harvesting part of that. Makes it easier than trying to wash the yeast after the fact.

 

[wynnum1]

If bottling the beer do the same as " RECULTURING COOPERS BOTTLE YEAST" .

 

[kippertaylor]

This is how it looks this morning after sitting in fridge overnight

 

[Coodgee]

it'll be all fine. you've probably just added a bit of yeast food so that if you warm it up it will start fermenting again to eat the priming sugar. might be better to let it eat it sooner rather than later. if you leave the lid on loose and leave it at room temperature it will probably develop a little krausen and purge the headspace of air and fill it with co2.

 

[Alex.Tas]

ImageUploadedByAussie Home Brewer1455060655.856276.jpg

This is how it looks this morning after sitting in fridge overnight

Nice work.

1. As Coodgee says, let it warm up and crack the lid a little so gas can escape. or cover with glad wrap and secure with a rubber band.
2. When you think its finished fermenting, put it back in the fridge for a few days to settle out the yeast.
3. Decant off most of the liquid and then give each jar a shake (with the lid on),
4. pour all three of your jars into one (if you want one larger sample). Small jam jars ~150ml work okay for this. it saves space in your fridge. If you want to get a bit more technical with your storage and future calculations, you could add a strip of masking tape to the outside of your final collection jar(s) and add incremental volume markers at intervals of say 10ml, so you can estimate the initial cell count when it comes time to revive your yeast with a starter (tight packed yeast is around 4.5 billion cells per ml)
5. top up the head space with cooled boiled water. label it with the date it finished fermenting
6. put it in the fridge and store for up to a year(obviously better to use it sooner).

That is a great yeast too. I found out the hard way that over pitching it leads to disappointing results, depending on what you want from your beer.

 

[kippertaylor]

Thanks I've done exactly what you have said Coodgee and Alex, got them warming up and then will decant onto another container. 4.5 billion cells for 1ml of yeast is that right, so roughly speaking how much would you general use to make your starter?

 

[Rocker1986]

The starter size depends on the OG and volume of wort you have, and also how much yeast you're starting with. My average wort is 25 litres at ~1.045 so depending on how much is in my harvested jar it'll be somewhere between 1 and 1.5 litres for an ale. I also use the harvesting from starters method so they actually get built about a litre extra than this to allow for the portion to be harvested into a mason jar. I have read on HBT I think it was, that it's actually better for the yeast to be left stored under beer rather than cooled boiled water.

 

[Yob]

No... Cooled boiled water is better, alcohol is toxic to yeast and the longer the contact time the more they suffer for it.

 

[Rocker1986]

I guess I've probably gotten away with it because I only have 2 or 3 strains max stored at any one time, so they get re-used quite regularly. In any case, I'm happy with the results I'm getting from my methods.

 

[Ben1]

There is a brulosophy article on this exact point. He used to recommend using boiled cooled water but now just leaves the yeast under the starter beer. I recall he kept them for up to a couple of months.

I have only just tried this method and haven't used the harvested starter so can't provide any opinion yet.

 

[Yob]

I will keep and you can do it.. its just not best practice and you get a drop in yeast Vitality.. It doesn't kill them, doesn't just drop off the cliff, BUT I always want the healthiest and best yeast I could from the process, especially as I want making starters at the time