Is the yeast in the liquid or the sludge?

[lailbrew]

I'm confused. Current practices say to rinse and reuse your yeast and to do so you rinse the trub in the fermenter with sanitized water and then pour that into a sanitized jar. To separate the yeast from the trub you stick it in the fridge to help the process, then pour off the clear fluid and keep that as your stored yeast.
Then, Jamil says that when you use a large starter say, 4 liters or more, you put it in the fridge before using it in order to encourage the yeast to drop out of suspension. Then you toss the majority of the liquid and just pitch the sludge at the bottom.
So, in the rinsing the yeast is in suspension after refrigeration and in starters the yeast is in the trub? I don't get it.

[siwelwerd]

It's a matter of how long. If you stick a yeast/trub mixture in the fridge and leave it overnight, everything will precipitate out, leaving essentially just water on top. In rinsing yeast, it is usually advised to shake the yeast/trub mixture well, leave it for 10 or so minutes, and then decant. In this short time, the heaviest particles (the trub) mostly precipitates to the bottom, while the yeast is still mostly in suspension.

Personally, I don't worry too much about getting a bit of trub mixed in with the yeast when saving it. For your other point "large" starter is relative--I make sure to decant the spent wort if the starter volume is greater than 10% of the batch size.

[lailbrew]

Thanks "swirlwerd"! Your the champ!

[scotchpine]

Also, when you take a cake from the fermenter by swirling it up to pour in a bottle or jar, then add a quart of pre boiled and cooled water and shake it like crazy then put it in the fridge for a while, it will settle into 3 layers. They are fairly obvious as; first layer on top is beer water, middle layer is clean yeast (white), and trub on the bottom. If I do it this way, I extract the yeast before distubing by using a sanitized turkey baster. Hope this helps.