Hi
@Mavroz
Over-building a starter involves preparing, say, 3 litres of starter yeast when you only need 2 litres. The remaining litre is refrigerated and used to build the starter next time you brew.
It's even easier with Kveik yeast Col, as you need such a small amount compared to a normal yeast, under-pitching is actually a good thing and won't ruin your beer. So basically, I was brewing a 13 litre beer, with an OG just short of 1.053. Beersmith 3 told me I needed a 1 litre starter under normal yeast rules, but truth is I needed much less than that with it been Kveik. So I made a 2 litre one, cold crashed it, used a tiny bit of the yeast for that brew, had enough for 2 more brews with a bit left that I can probably use to build up from again.
I don't fancy trying to wash yeast either to be honest, so will probably just dump the yeast again. I keep missing the opportunity to top crop, things always come up.... Shame really, there is a ton of yeast in the bottom of the porter FV, just sitting there... lol Top cropping Mavroz is scooping some of the Krausen off during the most active time, as this is when the yeast in there is at it's healthiest, and will quickly reproduce to replace the yeast you remove. Yeast washing basically is where you take the cake from the bottom of the FV and separate out the healthy yeast from all of the dead yeast and break material by getting it to fractionate, with the healthy yeast settling in a layer on the [edit]just did some research, as far as I can find, sources say from the middle layer...[/edit] sort of thing (that's my understanding anyway. Overbuilding is by far the easiest method though, where as Col says, you literally just get the yeast starter to reproduce to produce more yeast than you need to start your brew, and keep the difference back. Overbuilding is how I have gotten 41 litres of beer from 1 phial of yeast, with a tiny bit of yeast still left in the fridge to try to build up from still.... It makes the initial outlay (just over £8 for a phial) better value.
No hop matter in any of my FVs, as I use hop bags in the boil, and neither the porter or the golden ale are beers that needed a dry hop, so I'll just be harvesting the upper layers from the cake, and seeing how it goes.
