Reusing mead/wine yeast

[darkalex]

I've a batch of mead in primary, plastic bucket. Pitched the yeast today and plan on racking to secondary (glass carboy) in about 2-4 weeks, depending on how the fermentation proceeds. Can/should the mead yeast be rinsed and reused for another mead. I've repitched 3 generations of WLP001 and WLP029 great success, but these were with low to moderate gravity American and German ales. Now I've a dry mead yeast that is in a high gravity/high stress environment.

Do you think I can repitch with similar success or should I not bother and buy another pitch. Keep in mind I don't plan on the mead sitting on the primary yeast cake for more than a month and plan on rinsing.

Thanks BN Army!!

Alexander

[dontblake]

Probably not worth re-pitching. That yeast is pretty stressed, a fresh packet of dry wine yeast isn't all that expensive...
but, you might try yeast rinsing and pitching into a small amount of low-gravity must to see what happens. Report back with results if you do such a thing, would be interesting to see how things turn out.

[animaldoc]

Conventional wisdom is high alcohol stresses the yeast too much for them to be useful in later batches.

AFAIK, winemakers don't repitch yeast. Maybe it's because they ferment only once a year ......

Re - CULTURE the yeast -- sure, take a small amount from the ferment and feed it (or not) and streak it on a plate and grow it up again ......... that'll work.