Another Yeast Harvesting thread

[Covrich]

I probably should stick up pictures later but anyway I bottled my IPA yesterday and left a little bit of beer in the bottom (possibly should have left more)I then used a sanitised jug to scoop out trub into two jars (sanitised).. It initially just looked like two jars of sludge.

So for another option I boiled some water and cooled and stuck in the fermenter and made up about 1 liter "washed" and stuck in a 2 liter pop bottle

Now, this beer had a lot of hops in and for whatever reason there was quite a bit of trub.

I can see in the jars it settling down a little as there is a couple of cm of beer at the top but the rest is slurry and there appears to be no separation of colour change. Just appears to be the same colour but some white speckles.. They have been in the fridge overnight.

I have some 5 liter pet demijons.. I didn't know whether to make up a 2liter starter and pitch a jar of the slurry in see if it grows and separates in larger volume of wort..

Or do a larger wash and see if I can seperate that way.. or just wait a few days.

I probably need to put pictures up I guess

TIA

 

[MyQul]

You can actually use spent wort to wash the yeast.

1. Pour off any old speperated out oldbeer from one of your jars

2. Put 300ml-400ml of your trub into your demi john with 2L of starter wort.

3. Ferment out the starter

4. Give the starter a good shake and let it sit on the side for about 20 mins. All the heavy trub will sink to the bottom leaving the yeast in suspension in the spent wort.

5. Decant off the spent wort/yeast suspension and put it into the fridge to crash to see how much you've harvested.

You can then make a new starter prior to pitching with the harvested yeast after decanting off the 2L of spent wort once the yeast has crashed out if necessary

 

[Covrich]

Thanks I will have a look later see what they look like and possibly make a starter and dump on of the jars in (minus the little bit of wort that's on top.. I think there is a lot of yeast in there infact when I put it in the jar originally it looked like a creamy krausen I just cannot get it to seperate.. If I cannot get it to seperate at all I will just pitch a load of that in and remember top crop this second time around..

 

[MyQul]

Yeah, they'll be loads of yeast in there but they'll also be lots of dead yeast cells and other ****. I prefer to wash it my harvested trub then make a starter as it'll be healthier. But I've also just pitched trub straight, in the past and it works well