Reclaiming yeast from the FV

[mickeyt69]

Hi something i have never done is reclaim yeast from my FV so i have a couple of questions:-

1. Is it as simple as collecting say a pint off the bottom of the FV after i have racked my beer?
2. How long will it last like this and should i store it in the fridge?

Seems like i should have learned how to do this already. cheers in advance :-)

 

[unclepumble]

pretty much
but the best way is scrape the top skin off scoop out the middle layer and use this leaving behind the bottom third.

& your best to do this only with liquid yeasts rather than dried, but dried repitched will still work.

UP

 

[mickeyt69]

cheers uncle! :thumb:

 

[evanvine]

dried repitched will still work.

Is it not now liquid? :whistle:

 

[mickeyt69]

yeh thats what i thought whats the difference? also does anyone know how long it will last in that state?

 

[evanvine]

In the fridge it will keep for a couple of months.
I've frozen a lot of mine, but you run the risk of cell rupture.
So far all have fired up, some being 14 months old!

 

[simonranson]

I did this with my last Ginger beer, but not for the next beer brew, but for making some bread. I just took about 3 tablespoons of the yeast cake an bunged it in with some flour and a bit of sugar. Its well worth going as the Ginger made it taste fantastic.

Simon

 

[Mark1964]

The difference is that if you use sugar in your brew the collected yeast is not as good as where you collect the yeast from a brew with no sugar. I think the yeast feeds on the sugar used in the brew rather than the sugars from the malt grain which makes it a strain used to granulated sugar or similar not grain sugars.

I think???

 

[Aleman]

The difference is that if you use sugar in your brew the collected yeast is not as good as where you collect the yeast from a brew with no sugar. I think the yeast feeds on the sugar used in the brew rather than the sugars from the malt grain which makes it a strain used to granulated sugar or similar not grain sugars.

I think???

Try not to do a lot more Mark :grin:

If you are brewing kits and you have used 1kilo of sugar and 1 tin of kit, then what Mark is saying has a very slight modicum of truth . . .if you were to repitch this yeast over and over again into a similar wort eventually you would end up with a strain that fermented glucose in preference to maltose . . .and eventually it would probably loose the ability to ferment maltose . . . . for one or two repitches you will be fine though.

In a pretty much all wort beer where sugar makes up say 10% of the fermentables you will be fine. In the Belgian breweries where they regularly make triples they reuse the yeast slurry 6 times before using fresh . . .but this is also due to the unstable flavour characteristics of the strains they use for those beers rather than the high (>30%) sugar that is used in these beers.

Ideally you want about 100ml of the slurry in a 5 gallon batch of normal beer . . .stored under beer in the fridge it will last a few weeks . . .but as it gets older the number of viable cells declines and you need to pitch more slurry to account for this

 

[mickeyt69]

Cheers aleman i think i get what you are saying. I am brewing AG so no added sugar it should be ok because i am extracting maltose from the grains?

Once again thanks