Reusing Yeast

louis macneice said:

One of the easiest ways to do this is to plan a series of brews - e.g. pale ale, mild, ESB and old ale - and simply pitch each brew onto the yeast cake of the previous one.

I did almost exactly this with a liquid yeast (WLP007); all the ferments worked very well and produced some of the best tasting beers I've made. It also made the cost of the high quality yeast about £1.60 a go.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

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MyQul said:

I've never done this and I personally don't advocate it. It does work in both theory and practice (as you've proved), but there are consequences to such massive over pitching. Such as over attenuation and a more bitter tasting beer than planned. Also by the third or fourth brew there's a lot of dead cells on there so you may be risking autolysis. Are you just pitching onto the same yeast cake in the same fermenter rather than removeing the entire yeast cake and putting it in a clean FV? Because if you are your also risking infection, especially in summer

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louis macneice said:

One of the easiest ways to do this is to plan a series of brews - e.g. pale ale, mild, ESB and old ale - and simply pitch each brew onto the yeast cake of the previous one.

I did almost exactly this with a liquid yeast (WLP007); all the ferments worked very well and produced some of the best tasting beers I've made. It also made the cost of the high quality yeast about £1.60 a go.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

Click to expand...

MyQul said:

I've never done this and I personally don't advocate it. It does work in both theory and practice (as you've proved), but there are consequences to such massive over pitching. Such as over attenuation and a more bitter tasting beer than planned. Also by the third or fourth brew there's a lot of dead cells on there so you may be risking autolysis. Are you just pitching onto the same yeast cake in the same fermenter rather than removeing the entire yeast cake and putting it in a clean FV? Because if you are your also risking infection, especially in summer

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louis macneice said:

I pitched the slurry into a clean sterile fermenter and the abv ( and darkness) of the brews deliberately increased as I went along ending up with a 9% plus barley wine.

I didn't notice any unexpected dryness, but then again WLP 007 is a 'dry English' yeast so dryness was what I was aiming for.

All of that said thanks for the heads up re. both over attenuation and autolysis...more reading to do.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

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MyQul said:

Iirc the yeast labs (White labs/Wyeast) say 6 gens but you can go far beyond that depending on how your harvesting/growing the yeast

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Smileyr8 said:

I usually harvest the trub from the previous brew putting it in sterilised large jar then place that fridge until the day before my next brew. I then usually make a starter using beer enhancer (add until its pale ale coloured) and boiled water to about 3/4 to 1 pint and put this in a large kilner jar, once the liquid is cool enough to pitch, I pour the beer from the saved trub & then pour apx 1/4 to 3/8 a pint onto the already prepared liquid. Once the the next batch of beer is made and cooled I add the yeast to the beer.

I know this is not a precise method but so far it has worked well.

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Smileyr8 said:

Think I will put it through one more beer & see what we have, I crop the trub but might not pitch it we'll see.

I don't think �£3.50 / 6 = �£0.59 per brew is too bad.

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rodabod said:

Can anyone offer me advice or opinions on this:

I've just finished 23L batch of Fullers Porter @5.8% using Wyeast 1968 / WLP002. I don't want to leave it sitting on the yeast, and would like to keg it tomorrow.

I would like to re-use the yeast from this batch for a 16L batch of black IPA with OG @1.082, but will not be brewing tomorrow.

There is about 1" of trub/yeast in the fermenting vessel. I'm guessing I will need to transfer some of this into a jar in the fridge.

What I'm not sure about is how much to transfer?

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MyQul said:

Are you planning to just pitch the trub? When ever I've done this I pitched about 300ml-400ml into 23L of around 1.047OG. Seeing as you doing such a high OG but shorter length I'd be inclined to pitch the same amount perhaps a little more say 500ml just to make sure

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MyQul said:

When I come to buy/use this strain I plan on overbuilding starters then splitting it for the next brew rather than harvesting from the trub which should eliminate the problem of trying to seperate it from trub

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TartanSpecial said:

Thats what I have done for my forthcoming ESB brew...grew a 3 ltr starter form virgin WLP002, split into 3. 2ltrs will go into the brew and one litre kept back to grow more ahead of next time I use it.
This thread has inspired me to have a go at harvesting some saf05 from a pale ale I'll be bottling tomorrow.... will dump some out of the bottom of the conical into a sterile container and put a bit of the fermented beer on top to keep it happy until the next but one Galaxy pale ale I plan to brew.

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