The Southern Beer Society: Forums / Home Brew / Reusing Yeast

Forums

The Southern Beer Society :: Forums :: News and Opinions :: Home Brew

<< Previous thread | Next thread >>

Reusing Yeast

Author

Post

barefootbrewer

Tue Aug 19 2008, 07:20AM

Joined: Sun Jan 13 2008, 09:16AM
Posts: 240

I've never reused yeast but have been interested in doing so. I just kegged a beer last night from the secondary fermentor (I had used 1056). I also made a brew last night. I simply added some water to the bottom of the secondary fermentor and swirled it around and pitched into my new brew. Is this a valid way of reusing a yeast cake from the secondary? I haven't seen any signs of activity, but it has only been 10 hours. Should I pitch with a dry yeast if no yeast activity is noticed by this afternoon?

Any help would be appreciated.

NOLA Brew

Fri Aug 22 2008, 09:18AM

Registered Member #65
Joined: Thu Feb 28 2008, 08:59AM
Posts: 50

I'm a little late on this, but your beer should be fermenting fine now, but I would be very hesitant to simply add water to the yeast cake without boiling it and cooling it first, and especially weary to reuse this yeast a third time as infections grow slowly but steadily. The yeast is its weakest after its flocced out and adding in anything unsanitized is not recommended. It is really easy to reuse yeast a couple of times if you get on a good cycle, instead of adding water, you should leave a little beer in the bottom of the fermenter. Be sure to taste a sample of your first beer to make sure the last fermentation was what you expected, that it’s clean and you like the flavor. It’s even easier to rack your new wort into the same fermenter that the yeast is already in. The container is no longer sanitized, but it is overly infected with your desired yeast strain and that is your goal with sanitation in the first place, make a happy home for one micro organism so none other are around to take over. I do this no more than two times, and you need to rack the beer off the sediment within a week to avoid getting any umami flavors from autolysis or soapy flavors from the break down of the fatty acids in trub but its a real quick and easy way to reuse yeast.

After a couple times if you still want to reuse the yeast you can do like I said in the beginning which is leave some beer in, swirl it up gently and pour into a new fermenter. Do not pour everything, you are doing this to limit the amount of trub and dead yeast cells that make it into the next fermenter and there is way more yeast in that cake than you need. Be sure to sanitize everything that the yeast will come in contact with, not only the funnel, but its important to clean the rim of the carboy with rubbing alcohol and burn it off since that is the biggest trouble zone for contamination. If working with plastic you’ll want to stay away from fire, but be sure to rub the lip a couple times with your sanitizer of choice.

Hope that helps and keep those yeast happy and healthy with a constant supply of wort!

Do not cease to drink beer, to eat, to intoxicate thyself, to make love, and to celebrate the good days.

NOLA Brew

Fri Aug 22 2008, 09:27AM

Registered Member #65
Joined: Thu Feb 28 2008, 08:59AM
Posts: 50

Missed the part about it being from the secondary, you really want to use the yeast from the primary. They are the healthiest, the ones that are still working in the secondary are the freaks of the bunch. They survived in the higher alcohol solution and had to work a lot harder than everyone else who just decided to take a nap when they got drunk, and therefore are more likely to be dead not hibernating. You will have less trub going from the secondary, but that’s not really a concern if you rack it off within a week after majority of the work is done so you don’t have to worry about trub or autolysis off flavors. If you want to remove your trub before going into the primary that will solve the accumulating sediment, but with several trials I find that settling the trub out in a sanitized container, letting the cold break settle, then racking off the trub into the primary is really an unnecessary step for homebrewers, and also gives you a longer lag time and a greater chance of infection with no perceivable difference in flavor in the finished beer.

Do not cease to drink beer, to eat, to intoxicate thyself, to make love, and to celebrate the good days.

barefootbrewer

Mon Aug 25 2008, 08:51AM

Joined: Sun Jan 13 2008, 09:16AM
Posts: 240

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I got it a little late. I was just wanting to experiment and I knew that pitching in my secondary would blow the top off. I sanitized everything and poured about a pint (clean) water in. Swished it around and pitched that into my wort. There was about a 15 hour lag then it really blew up bigtime.

I definitely appreciate the response and will keep it in mind. It was wyeast1056 and I was doing a quick extract on the fly "for the hell of it". I thought experimenting would be more fun than pitching a dry yeast.

I think next time I'll try to time it so I'm pitching onto a yeast cake from primary.

Thanks!

tsukasab

Sun Jul 18 2010, 08:35PM