How To Harvest and Wash Yeast for Homebrewing 

Thank you for a very formal and educational video without shenanigans. That has its place, but 'yeast washing' led me to this video and it was perfectly to the point with good production value.

Cool, this was very helpful for me. I am brewing wild mead and have been looking for such a method. Thanks a lot!

Awesome, exactly what I was looking for. So many different videos about yeast that it was hard to find the right one 😂.

Brewgrass homebrew louisville ky. turned me on to your channel and said your channel was good info and straight to the point, which is what I need. Thanks to both of you and keep up the great work.

Awesome! Very good information. Sorry for the long post... I work as sourodugh+ bread baker at a brewery in Pittsburgh, and the senior brewer gave some of their house kviek. I used it 1 month ago to brew some mead (actually cyser or honey-cider as I brew with apple juice and a local raw honey which helps add some body to the mead)(This batch: 5 gallons (dry)hopped mead, 1 gallon of basic mead for mixing, and 1 gallon of peach mead). Target was 9ish% ABV. Apple juice kicked that up a little. One batch had some peaches added in primary, and its ABV was a tad bit higher (the other flavor being a new zealand hop varietal (nelson sauvin) hopped mead; the brewery gets a ton of hop samples which they kick down to me!). Any-who. This mead home-brew project is a good candidate for yeast wash. I am a very visual learner so videos like this are awesome. Going to start my second batch this weekend. Brew-day Monday: 3, 1 gallon batches to test the washed yeast technique: 1) Mango/peach/ginger, 2) Strawberry bochet*, 3) Cherry/Hibiscus (viking blood) my goal is to make a sort of fusion of 'mead' and the ole juicy NEIPA. For home consumption. *'Jam' style mead: cook the strawberries down at 200-220 F. for an hour or so, add the honey with the buzzed/strained strawberry stuff and cook that for one hour (200-220 F). Then make your mead as you do. *Apple juice is store bought but the added fruits are whole processed and juiced, lightly strained. Pulp is fine. Cloudy mead as a home-brewer is not a problem. Will add less-acidic citruses sometimes thought the kviek flavor is fairly tropica/citrus (prefer clementines, mandarian, blood, valencia, etc) and dried fancy yellow raisins (sultanas) as yeast nutrient (plus real yeast nutrient too); but I avoid citric acid/wine tannin/back sweeteners, the like. WATER/HOPS/HONEY/YEAST.

This is like the most important part of the process. Yeast seems to adapt to the way you treat it and gets better the more you use it.

Erlenmeyer flasks are great for the initial decanting, makes it really easy to separate...

I do mine the same way, I recently grabbed a jar of washed yeast from the back of my fridge. Was sitting there for 1.5 years. I'm happy to say that it still picked up in my starter and brewed awesome beer with it.

I just wanted to say that everyone @ clawhammer are great people and great home brewer's I hope to see more great beer Brewing videos.

There is one more reason to reuse yeast - they are "stronger" and more resistant. Such yeasts are good for very dense and strong beers such as RIS or barley wine. In addition, they start working quicker.

Killin the yeast game!

Thanks!! Loved it

Nice and to the point. Thanks!

Chop & brew is where I learned how to crazy

thanks for the vid emmet.......

That beard is pure viking gold! thanks for the wisdom, Hail Odin!

Hello, thank you for this very helpfull video. I just have one question. When you re-use your harvested yeast, do you make a starter with one jar or with more jars? I assume it depends on the size of your wort, but how could I know how many jars I have to use? Many thanks!!

I didnt have defined layers between the yeast and trub. Is it ok to get some of the old trub in the next batch or how can I get it out completely?

I know there are a few variables, but how many jars on average to you use to make a starter for next beer? You think star San is fine instead of boiling the jars?

If you want another way of doing the same thing check out our video on yeast washing.

Interesting, I always start by adding sugar or honey to the 1st rinse, shaking it up and seeing if it bubbles. If it does, I proceed as seen in this video - if there is no action, I assume the yeast is dead (exceeded ABV limit, starved too long, or over chilled) and dump it straight into the compost.

I commando dry hopped and the sediment is all mixed with the hop material. Is it still possible to separate the yeast?

Cheers!

Following these steps got me some nice thick yeast... cakes? at the bottom of my mason jars, so thanks for that! I'm wondering though, for calculating a starter, is there any way to estimate the cell count of yeast captured this way?

I’ve never washed and harvested yeast, I’m about to use liquid yeast for the first time and given the expense I’d like to harvest. I tend to dry hop without using a hop sock is this going to hinder me when harvesting?

Great video. I assume you are using a 5 gallon carboy as you have that much trub left over from a 5 gallon batch. I only brew in 1 gallon batches so I could probably use a 1 gallon carboy (well we call them demijohns here in the UK) to separate the suspended yeast from the trub right?

Cool idea to save expensive turbo yeast

So this can be done from any beer leaving primary, correct? A starter can be made from either washed yeast or a newly bought packet also. So why wouldn't I want to make a starter and harvest/wash it after making a beer with a dry yeast packet? Saving $ is still saving money, right?

Maybe I missed it but should I let the washed yeast come to room temp before adding it to the cooled down wort? I assume it would shock if I add it straight from the fridge .

Why can't beer be done in continuous brew method like kombucha or water kefir?

He can not make a mess...ever.

will this same method work with dry hopped 7% ipa yeast?

How long would that washed yeast last In the fridge? Great video by the way.

Good school Thx thx!

A quick question, how long can this harvested yeast can be kept for in the fridge? I am starting out to harvest my own yeast as it is to expensive to buy currently.

4 jars of washed yeast, I assume this = 4 different batches of beer provided the correct starter treatments per whatever beers are being produced. Am I correct? Also, how long do the yeast survive in the fridge. Great video!

thank you, all is perfectly clear one thing I want to ask you is "how much of this harvested yeast can we use for our next 23liter batch?" bye from Sicily

where is the first bucket from the begining ?

How many times can you do this....?

Great video! Ruffly how much of the harvested yeast would you pitch for a 5 gallon batch? How best do you store it?

I culture my yeast onto agar slants. Keep it in the fridge and grab some off the slant with inoculation loop and drop it into my starter. Much more sterile. Yeast stains modify themselves if you try to wash them.

Could you do this with champagne yeast ?

I've washed yeast for years, and still do, but now n days, more times than not, I'll just make a larger starter, and harvest half of it into jars for future batches. Cost a little extra $ in DME, but saves me the hassle of boiling jars and the time it takes to wash yeast

Why distilled water instead of spring water?

Hi, i was try to opening part 2 but was erased, do you Will publish a new video about starter from harvested yeast?

super good video dude. I may have missed you saying it....how long do you think captured yeast will stay viable in a fridge?

how long can you store this yiest before it dies?

Thank you great illustration. Though seeing the soapy bubbles in the jars after sanitizing makes me cringe.

Great video. Do you freeze your yeast and what is your process?

the link to part 2 of this series is broken in this description

dont you need to wash off the sanitizer ?

should you not be using an isotonic solution? instead of distilled water? @Clawhammer Supply

What do you do with the rest of the sediment in the 5 gal carboy? I'd have thought this would have been what you would reuse...?

I know they're made to handle it but I always wince when I see hot liquid going into a flask!! Lol funny timing I have a top cropping video coming out soon! Cheers guys!! 👍🍻

I've never washed my yeast. I just collect the crud in the bottom of my carboy in a mason jar, put some foil on top, and stick it in the fridge until needed. Then I discard the liquid on top and throw the rest in the new batch. What am I missing? My beer is great...

Does the distilled water need to be boiled to get santized?

PLEASE sonebody tell me, cant we just use like half a cup of slurry from the last batch pitched straight into the next batch?

I washed some kölsch yeast, stored in the fridge for nine weeks then made a 6 step starter... Fermented out fine in twelve days, cold second for three weeks... Then, two months after bottling it ain't carbed up at all! What could have gone wrong?

Is the making of a starter really necessary?

gave him a like for the beard

😃

You don't have to sanitize the flask if you're pouring boiling DME in there. The heat will kill everything

I'm a fan of Chop and Brew but this video comes up before theirs now when searching "yeast washing". The tutorial I saw before this one had a cockroach dart across the counter. Does not make me want to try their beer.

sir how to make sanitizer

I really like your videos, but washing yeast is not doing anything but increasing the risk of a contamination drastically. The trub that you might get from harvesting yeast will be flocculate anyway, so you won’t have that in the final beer. I’ve been harvesting my yeast for the last seven batches without washing yeast and the beers turned out great! 🙂

Be careful not to introduce too much oxygen to the yeast! This will put the anaerobic yeast back in to it's erobic state. Yeast can survive for a long time when it's in an anaerobic state (when there's no oxygen). You can see how many of your yeast cells are still alive if you mix a sample with a special dye. (I can't remember the name) Dead yeast will absorb the dye, whilst healthy yeast cells will 'reject' the dye. Just count 100 cells under a microscope, and calculate the percentage of clear cells! This is used in large breweries to prevent over or underpitching.

I disagree that you need to make a yeast starter to use the harvested yeast. I never do. If you need more yeast, just use more than one jar. I just add yeast nutrient to the boil, and shake up the yeast jar with a little olive oil a half hour before pitching to aerate it and give it some lipids.

Now I can produce infinite number of pizzas

Save more than a few bucks i reuse mine 8 9 times at 10 bucks thats more than a few

My dude is doing this with sanitizer on his hands and in the containers... press X to doubt.

yeast *rinsing

Too much time and cleaning involved to save a few bucks. I'll just buy more yeast. Thanks for the video though.

I have deduced this man has no children or pets or at least they are forbidden from his vlogging studio.

sanitized funnel for a slurry full of spiddle and beard hair

Too many steps......... this is beer we're brewing, not rocket fuel. After you brew beer for a year or two, this will not work.

This guy would have some serious yeast in that beard! Yuck!