Washing Yeast

[bbushmaster]

here is John Palmers method does any body do this
After racking the beer, swirl up the yeast layer on the bottom and pour some into a large sanitized jar (such as a mayonnaise jar).
Gently pour in some cold, boiled water and swirl it up to get all the yeast and trub in suspension.
Let the jar sit for a minute or three to allow most of the trub to settle to the bottom. Gently pour the cloudy water, containing suspended yeast, into another sanitized jar. Discard the dark trub.
Add some more water and repeat this procedure until you are left with a substantially light-colored yeast suspension and only a thin brown layer of dead yeast and trub on the bottom of the jar.
Store the jar in the refridgerator for up to a couple months. The yeast will turn brown as it ages. Discard it once it turns the color of peanut butter. Eventually the yeast will autolyze and die as its nutritional reserves are used up.
Pitch the yeast to a starter before using to ensure its vitality. If the starter smells wrong--rancid, vinegary, etc., the yeast may be contaminated. The dominant smell of a starter should be a yeasty smell, but sulfur smells are not necessarily bad, especially with lager yeast strains.

*Note: You want to use boiled water for two reasons:

For sanitation.
To avoid exposing the yeast to dissolved oxygen which would cause the yeast to deplete their glycogen reserves before storage.

[Gridiron Brewer]

I have done this before right in the fermenter. I then rack the cloudy water to next fermenter, chill it to get the yeast out of suspension; rack off the water; then rack on the wort.

[Ogre]

I've just dumped new wort onto a yeast cake.  I've just never gotten the gumption up to clean the yeast yet.

[bbushmaster]

well I just thought about doing it to save yeast for awhile not really for the cleanliness

[BeerDaddy]

There are excellent articles on the BrewingTechniques web site for yeast culturing and storage, see the following web page:

 http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue2.3/king.html

I myself have been slowly but surely buying up lab equipment for this purpose.

I am looking for one of the microscopes that uses a USB link to a computer, so that i can stain
yeast cultures and re-culture my yeast.

By the way, BrewingTechniques recommends washing the yeast in a mild food grade acid to eliminate bacteria, this will sanitize the yeast killing bacteria "Like Lacto Type Bacteria", but not kill wild yeast.

[bbushmaster]

well I was using John Palmers methods maybe I should have posted the whole thing first, but I have found if you keep things as simple as possible there is less chance for failure mainly when brewing so I tried this last night and it seems to have worked well as far as removing trub and what not I used yeast from an very dark oatmeal stout and now the yeast is back to its normal color I would go as far as saying I would use it for an ale now but we will see how well it works in a few months that will be the test anyway here is the rest of the page from his book

Simple Yeast Ranching
Each batch of beer you brew is a good source of yeast for a future batch. The best way to obtain yeast is to skim it from the krausen of a currently fermenting beer. To do this, you will need to be using a bucket type fermentor and first skim off the green/brown hop and protein compounds with a sanitized spoon early in the primary phase. As the creamy white krausen builds up, you can skim this fresh yeast off with a sanitized spoon and transfer it to a sanitized jar. Fill the jar with cooled boiled water and place it in the refridgerator. The lack of nutrients in the water will cause the yeast to kind of "hibernate" and it will keep for up to a couple months. You should pitch this yeast to a starter after storage to re-vitalize it.

The only drawback to the above harvesting method is the contamination risk for the current batch. Experienced brewers with good sanitation practices can harvest yeast that way without much risk, but for newer brewers it is probably better to collect the yeast after the fermentation is complete. You can collect yeast from either the bottom of the primary or secondary fermentor. If you obtain yeast from the secondary, it will have only small amounts of trub mixed in and will be easy to seperate. However, you need ot be aware that if you repitch yeast harvested from the secondary several times in succession, you will tend to select the less flocculant cells of the population, and future beers will be slow to clarify. But, if you only repitch once or twice, it is not a big deal. I myself usually harvest yeast from the secondary.

If you harvest yeast from the primary fermentor, you will need to separate the yeast from all the trub that is mixed in. Professional brewers most often do this by "acid washing" the yeast--using acid to lower the pH to about 2.5 so that bacteria is inhibited and using whirlpool methods to seperate the heavier trub from the lighter yeast. But acid washing tends to inhibit the yeast too, and is not strictly necessary. You can simply use chilled boiled* water and two sanitized jars to separate the healthy yeast (white) away from the majority of the trub.

After racking the beer, swirl up the yeast layer on the bottom and pour some into a large sanitized jar (such as a mayonnaise jar).
Gently pour in some cold, boiled water and swirl it up to get all the yeast and trub in suspension.
Let the jar sit for a minute or three to allow most of the trub to settle to the bottom. Gently pour the cloudy water, containing suspended yeast, into another sanitized jar. Discard the dark trub.
Add some more water and repeat this procedure until you are left with a substantially light-colored yeast suspension and only a thin brown layer of dead yeast and trub on the bottom of the jar.
Store the jar in the refridgerator for up to a couple months. The yeast will turn brown as it ages. Discard it once it turns the color of peanut butter. Eventually the yeast will autolyze and die as its nutritional reserves are used up.
Pitch the yeast to a starter before using to ensure its vitality. If the starter smells wrong--rancid, vinegary, etc., the yeast may be contaminated. The dominant smell of a starter should be a yeasty smell, but sulfur smells are not necessarily bad, especially with lager yeast strains.

*Note: You want to use boiled water for two reasons:

For sanitation.
To avoid exposing the yeast to dissolved oxygen which would cause the yeast to deplete their glycogen reserves before storage.

[Ogre]

I might try the secondary option.  I already boil my hoses when racking so putting another pot on the range won't be too big a deal.

[bbushmaster]

yeah thats what I did I just racked into my secondary and whatever yeast cake and trub was left I did it with that if your going to try, do all of what you can get out, I thought I had too much and dumped out about half the cake but after chilling what I had washed I only got about 1/2 inch of clean yeast on the bottom of each jar I did two of the bigger ball jars after a starter it should be fine though

P.S. you will need atleast 5 jars to do a whole cake maybe more

[bbushmaster]

oh and only put about 1 inch of slurry into the jars before adding the water I tried filling it about half way and it didnt work very well