Quick help required: first time repitching yeast.

Recovered about a litre of Us05 from my last batch while bottling yesterday.
Refrigerated over night and poured about the top 250ml from one half of the collected trub.

Gave it about 15g of sugar in about 100 ml of boiled water while I started mashing and I have this.

Do I pitch
- all of it (will the left over trub cause any issues?)
- just the top or
- (hopefully not) the back up yeast pack?

Boil is done at 1610 so answers before 5pm please. :-)

Just pitch the lot, trub wont be a problem. Btw you shouldn't really use sugar water as a starter medium. You could have used some of your own wort from about 15 mins into the boil then cooled it and added it to the yeast

Thanks. Good tip about the early boil wort.

That's effectively what I do to use as starter wort. Although, because I no chill I just take 2L of the near boiling wort from the no chill cube, cool it in the sink and add my yeast. Two days later when my wort is cool (it doesn't take two days to cool down but I find it convenient to brew on sat and pitch on mon eve) and my starter is fermented out I just pitch the lot into the main body of the wort

I'm a bit confused by this as I thought cooling and pitching had to be done as soon as possible?

Learning all the time I'm on here; What's best and what the limits are.

Most literature does suggest that a quick cool and pitch is desirable, apparently it helps remove chill haze and limits the exposure to potential infection.

Unfortunately life gets in the way, my brew today was 6 hours including clean up and deciding the weather was good enough to get the gear out of the shed. I believe MyQul did some reading around other options and found a 2 or 3 day method that works for him and was good enough to share his split day brewing, including a no chill option "overnight" in an airtight cube.

One of the most important things I've found in my first year of brewing is your brew day(s) have to work for you.

Richie_asg1 said:

I'm a bit confused by this as I thought cooling and pitching had to be done as soon as possible?

Learning all the time I'm on here; What's best and what the limits are.

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Yes and no. Confused? :lol:

If your going do things the traditional way, you firstly need to cool as fast as possible. This "draws" all the protiens out of the wort to give you a clearer beer. Now that you've cooled the wort if you hang around too long (several hours) your giving other microbes a chance to get a hold in your lovely sweet wort. So you need to get your yeast in there sharpish and hopefully have a minimum lag time (the time between you chucking your yeast into the wort and it starting to ferment it), so the yeast can out-compete any other micro-organisms. It's pretty good at doing this as brewer's yeast over thousands (probably millions) of generations is well adapted to wort

However...If you haven't got a chiller you can do what I do, which is called no-chill. After the boil cover your pot or put it, whilst it's still near boiling in what's called a no-chill cube (I just use my old coopers FV). Because its near boiling it kills any micro-organisms in the cube (or has already done so during the boil if your just using you pot). Seal up the cube (I use cling film over the top but some people just put the lid on the top of their pot) so no more micro-organisms can enter and leave to cool for 24-48 hours. Some people use large plastic jerry cans and store wort for months. Then when your ready open the cube and chuck your yeast in just like you'd cooled the wort quickly.
One downside of no-chill is, because you haven't chilled quickly and drawn all the protiens out of the wort, when you chill your beer you get something called "chill haze" which is the protiens clumping together in the beer making it go hazy. No effect on taste though

I see. So you have basically sterilised the pot it is in. :idea:

Did this to some soup tonight, and beef brisket in a slow cooker tastes better the 2nd or 3rd day. (But I cheat and use puff pastry in the oven and call it pie) :smile:

Thanks I understand better now.

Yes, you essentially santize your pot/cube using the heat from the wort to do so. I dont put any beef brisket in my beer as I'm vegetarian

@MyQul and any other yeasties harvesters.

This fermentation appears to be going really well. Had a sneaky peak yesterday and since then the krausen has almost doubled (it covers about a gallon according to the bucket scale).
Is it worth top cropping for use in a black ipa in 2-3 months or is
- the top crop shelf life shorter?
- it asking too much of one set of yeasties to munch through potentially three 1.060 brews?

wfr42 said:

@MyQul and any other yeasties harvesters.

This fermentation appears to be going really well. Had a sneaky peak yesterday and since then the krausen has almost doubled (it covers about a gallon according to the bucket scale).
Is it worth top cropping for use in a black ipa in 2-3 months or is
- the top crop shelf life shorter?
- it asking too much of one set of yeasties to munch through potentially three 1.060 brews?

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US-05 isn't really a top cropping yeast strain. Belgian and English strains with huge krausens (ones you need a blow off tubes for) are some of the best top croppers. Normally with top cropping you need to put it into another brew within a few days (although I beleive other forumites have mangaged to store top cropped yeast for longer periods of time.) Its best jut to harvest some of the trub and store it in a jar. If your not brewing again till 2-3 months time you'll need to make a starter.

You can go to at least 5-6 generations from bottom cropping and much further with other methods. I've read that at 3 generations many strains of yeast are just getting to their best

I've stored top cropped in the fridge for a few months. Yeast hibernates best under beer in the fridge, so either take some of the fermenting wort when you crop or add the cropped yeast to some freshly-made, boiled and cooled wort.

When it comes to using it, you will need to rouse it with a starter before pitching.

This method has worked for me.

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2nd half of the bottom cropped yeast has gone crazy!
I swear it only had the liquid layer on top of the yeast true this morning. Had been meaning to decant it some time soon.

Is this redeemable?

Should be. Give it a gently swirl to get some of it to sink back down to the bottom then put it in the fridge to cold crash for a few days. It should all then sink to the bottom

It did this in the fridge....but I'll try.
Collected it about 4weeks ago.

I've had the same with a very active top cropper - the krausen seems very fridge-resistant, swirl it til it's all mixed up then put it back the fridge - it will probably crash out then after a couple of days

jeg3 said:

I've had the same with a very active top cropper - the krausen seems very fridge-resistant, swirl it til it's all mixed up then put it back the fridge - it will probably crash out then after a couple of days

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What do you think of the wye valley strain?? what you used it on

Keep thinking of getting a butty batch , but I have a shepherds neame bottle finally so will start growing that bad boy first :)

It's really good, so far done a HPA clone, a dark Ruby mild, first gold bitter and recently a pale bitter (a bathams recipe).

All have been good. I'd say the HPA was the best (and my best all time beer yet) with this yeast.

I've just grown Fullers yeast from a Bengal lancer, and will be pitching that in something over the weekend

My calcs indicate it's quite high attenuating, but it flocculates well also. Although the krausen will stick around for weeks if left alone

Covrich said:

What do you think of the wye valley strain?? what you used it on

Keep thinking of getting a butty batch , but I have a shepherds neame bottle finally so will start growing that bad boy first :)

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My brown ale I put the SN yeast in is fantastic. Haven't put it in anything else yet.