Beer Forum

Who here re-uses the yeast for a couple of generations?

I hear the important factors are 1. sanitation 2. that the wort isn't over 1.065 3. and sanitation

....How much should I take from the bottom of my primary? Do I add sugar with it? can I use a screw on lid or is it going to explode? Do I leave air in the jar that I keep the yeast in?

Anyone who has cultured their own yeast, or reused the yeast...

Please let me know how it works.

Sincerely, Dmp

I've washed yeast and have been reusing it. I learned about it on another forum and don't want to break any protocol I may not know about by linking there - I don't know if there's information here.

You can google up "Yeast Washing" and find out about it. The short version you boil up a bunch of mason jars and lids, and once you rack off the cake, you add several mason jars of boiled and cooled water to the carboy / bucket and swish that up well. Let is settle for a while (30 minutes or so), then decant off the sediment into the mason jars you've boiled. Close the lid, wait another 30 minutes or so and decant off the sediment layer again. Close up the lids and there you go. 3-4 jars of yeast.

I did this with Wyeast strains 1056 and 1968. I've used both of the first and second generations successfully, and in fact they seem to be more vigorous and take off sooner than other starters. That's a very un-scientific observation, though.

Brew strong has a show about yeast washing/rinsing

Download it and listen. Its good stuff.

I have been reusing yeast. I ferment in plastic buckets and top crop (using WLP001). Good results so far.

I repitch all of my liquid yeast over multiple generations. I've just had a to ditch some SF Lager after a batch got all murky and I cleared it in the primary with gelatin but otherwise, I have 4th gen WLP029 and 5th gen WLP013 waiting for their next beer. Sooner or later I am going to start banking strains (prb starting with the vial of cry havoc in my fridge). Kaiser has a nice resource on culturing over on his wiki:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?ti ... rmentation

As your racking your beer off, leave a tiny bit of beer left. swirl it around then rack it to a sanitary container. I just put foil over so not to worry about co2. When your ready to use it use mr malty.com to see how much of it to use. Like you said try to keep it under a 1.063 and also i hear try to keep it under two weeks.