Harvesting and Reusing Yeast

[kierank]

This topic has probably been covered numerous times before but I'll ask again anyway. Has anyone had any success harvesting and reusing dry yeast?  If so  how do you wash it and how long can you store it in the fridge. I am not doing it to save money, I just hate the thoughts of throwing out what could be a perfectly healthy yeast. I have had some great results and some reasonable results before. I do all grain brews so it's a lot of effort wasted if you stuff up the yeast. I know people will say why bother for a $5 dry yeast but I enjoy trying something different.    Cheers       Kieran

[Otto Von Blotto]

Plenty do it with success. You don't even really have to wash it, just scoop a third or so of the trub out and put it in a clean and sanitised jar. If you pitch it into the next batch within a couple of weeks it should be fine. 

I used to reuse US-05 although with a different method (yeast starters). Worked fine.

[The Captain!!]

I’ve heard of guys pulling out 1l of slurry and beer from the FV. Then filling up the 2l flask with distilled or boiled and cooled water, once separation occurs, decant to two 1l jars, seperate then decant to 4 500ml jars and refrigerate 

 

[Shamus O'Sean]

Harvesting straight from the fermenter:

I leave about as much beer as yeast in the bottom of the fermenter.  Pick it up and swirl until it forms a nice creamy consistency.  Then I decant evenly into pre-sanitised jars via the fermenter tap.  This way I do not need to sanitise anything to scoop out the yeast.

I leave the lids slightly ajar (and pop them in the fridge) - Any CO2 can escape if necessary.  Makes them easier to open later on too.

I have been putting this yeast into two jars, but looking at some yeast calculators, the 200mls or so of yeast sediment is probably an overpitch. Might look to split it into three jars, even if I do not get around to re-using all three within a reasonable time. 

This is a 1L jar.  About 250ml of yeast and 450ml of beer.  I took it straight out of the fridge when I was ready to pitch.  Carefully tipped off 3/4's of the beer first.  Swirled up the yeast and the remaining beer until it was a nice creamy consistency.  Then pitched into my fermenter.  Fine bubbles appeared on the surface in less than 6 hours.  1cm krausen within 24 hours.

It was a month in the fridge so some of the yeasties will have died off.  I might not get around to using it's brother beside it.  Six weeks would be about the longest I have kept harvested yeast before re-using it.

[Worthog]

@kierank 

https://community.diybeer.com/topic/13263-how-to-properly-harvest-yeast/?do=findComment&comment=178061