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Hey guys,

Just trying to get a handle on how to wash yeast. I have reused yeast in the past, by timing my brewdays so that I had a new beer to pitch on top of my yeast cake right after transferring. But my friend has an IPA on 1056, and I'd like to harvest the yeast when he transfers to secondary tomorrow. Since it's all full of hops n trub, i'd like to wash it.

Following advice on some other website somewhere ( ) I boiled four 500ml mason jars and lids, took em out full of the water, capped em, and i'm waiting for them to cool. Tomorrow, after i rack the beer, I dump these into the bucket, swirl it up, wait a few minutes for the trub to settle out, then pour it into another sterile container (i'll use a big pot or something, i dunno. I couldn't find any big jars). wait again, then pour it into my mason jars so there's no dead space, cap n refridgerate.

Does this sound about right? anything I can do more easily? (eg, could i leave out the intermediate decant, and just pour straight from the bucket to the mason jars?).

Thanks for any help you can offer

When I need to wash yeast, I boil up some water in the tea kettle, then put the kettle in cold water to cool it off. Then I rack the beer into the secondary and leave a little beer behind. When the boiled water is cool, I dump some of it into the primary and swirl it around to loosen it up. Then I wipe the mouth with some rubbing alcohol and dump it all in a big glass jug my wife bought for lemonade or sangria or something else that's never gone in it. Then it goes in the fridge, and the next day or whenever I'll decant the water and the top layer off into another sanitized something, leaving the sludge behind. Then I'll often get paranoid and keep the sludge anyway, taking up fridge space until the cleaned yeast has started another beer.

Those steps sound reasonable. I always use lots of 70% alcohol and spray around lots of star san. The main goal is keeping down the sources of contamination.

mr x wrote:Those steps sound reasonable. I always use lots of 70% alcohol and spray around lots of star san. The main goal is keeping down the sources of contamination.

thanks guys, I'll be giving it a try shortly. 70% alcohol - is that just from the grocery store (ie denatured)?

Get it at ss or walmart in the pharmacy section. Don't get the 99%.