Washing your yeast June 09 2016, 0 Comments

The next time you re-pitch yeast into a new batch, consider doing a quick Yeast Wash / Rinse first. This will help separate and capture all the viable, healthy yeast from the trub and old beer.

Here's a quick how-to:

1) Prior to re-pitching, boil 1 gallon of water for 10-15 minutes, then chill that water.
2) Decant off any beer/liquid from the yeast you plan to re-pitch from the container the yeast has been stored in.
3) Pour your boiled and chilled water into that storage container.
4) Swirl and re-suspend all the solids in that container.
5) Clean and sanitize another container (like a flask in the picture).
6) Pour the contents of the container into the freshly sanitized container. Top up with remaining boiled and chilled water and cover with sanitized stopper and airlock or aluminum foil.
7) Let settle for a couple of hours. You'll notice any remaining beer float to the top and hop particles, dead yeast sells, and other solids float to the bottom. You want to keep everything else.
8) Decant off the beer.
9) very gently swirl the container, not to aggressively to disrupt the darker solids on the bottom.
10) Pour into fermentor, leaving behind the darker solids.