How to store brewer's yeast. Reuse of yeast sludge

Yeast washes are used by homebrewers to reuse strains, but in next game beer. The essence of the process - it is important to separate living cells from hop and grain residues. They settle on the bottom, which simplifies the procedure.

As a result, you can grow a viable colony to start the next fermentation. It will become the base of the starter. Yeast washing allows up to 5-6 brews after sampling. This is enough for six months ahead.

Technologically, flushing is not difficult. Prepare two glass jars in advance, sterilize, boil water and take some foil or food film. Strictly monitor cleanliness, as this is critical to the viability of the yeast.

How to rinse yeast

Take water room temperature. Banks are clean. The topmost edges fermentation tank walk with a disinfectant. When in doubt, where is it better to take strains - from primary or secondary fermentation. Do not hesitate, ideally from the primary. It contains much more living cells. You need to do this at the moment when you pour the wort over re-fermentation. You will see the leftover sediment, which we will use. Pour a liter of boiled cooled water.

Shake the container lightly and let the sediment settle to the bottom again. You should get a mixture with a dense layer on the bottom and liquid on top, which you pour carefully, without hitting the bottom layer, into a jar. Cover with cling film or foil and secure with a rubber band. Place in the refrigerator for half an hour to an hour. After this time, you will see how the mixture again formed a precipitate and liquid. Our task is to get the liquid, all the active strains are in it. Sediment is garbage. Carefully drain the liquid, cover again and transfer to the refrigerator for an hour.

If you see that there is a lot of sludge again, do the procedure again. This mixture can be stored for several months and used as needed. Ideally, try to control the cleanliness to prevent contamination. Can be stored in a sealed bottle.

How to add to wort

Before the day of brewing, add some wort to the mixture to make a beer yeast starter. If you don't want to use all at once, pour as much as you need for your batch, or harvest after primary fermentation. We do not recommend using the same yeast more than 4-6 times.

This topic causes a lot of controversy and questions, some say that this is how it should be, others say that it’s impossible, others are inclined to believe that it is dangerous to reuse yeast sediment ... I propose to weigh the pros and cons and find out the truth.

Can yeast lees be reused?

In one of the articles, I already considered what yeast sediment is. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend doing it right now, otherwise we just might not understand why I write what I write.

So, as we have already understood, yeast sediment is not only live, but inactive yeast, but also a lot of other things.

Now let's think about what happens when you drain the beer from the sediment. And now I'm not talking about oxygen access, or oxidation ... no - these are all trifles ... what is really happening?

Here you are pouring beer from a walker, whether it's a faucet or a siphon, or just over the edge. You opened the fermentation tank, air got in.

What is always in the air in our apartments? That's right - dust. What does it consist of? from anything, but as statistics show, in residential buildings, dust is skin and hair + sand from the street, and of course pollen and other things that come from the street.

Why is dust dangerous?

Dust particles may contain bacterial spores or wild yeast and other nasty crap. What about spontaneous fermentation? some of you will exclaim in your head! - but not how! Where is this technique common? in big cities? and invented now? No, this method was invented when there was not so much dirt, exhaust gases, heavy metals and other rubbish in the air. As for the locality, this technique was used only in certain regions where wild yeast strains in a certain season were acceptable. I doubt a hundred in the center of St. Petersburg, a strain will fly into the window, giving a wonderful raspberry flavor... Rather Streptococcus, and other abominations ...

I will make a reservation that opening the lid of the walker does not mean at all that the beer will be spoiled, even if a bunch of bacteria fly there, most of of them will die from alcohol. But we are not talking about beer now, but about sediment!

Just imagine, you drained the beer and bacteria got into your sediment, let it be harmless lactic acid, from the yogurt that the child ate a week ago ... a lot if you decide to reuse it) and throw it into fresh wort... Mmmm... fresh sweet wort... Yeast starts to live in it.. and bacteria... eventually the beer turns sour - down the toilet...

Is it possible to use the sediment, if you are careful?

To this I can answer: are you sure that in last time did everything go smoothly? after all, your beer will be ready in a couple of weeks, maybe it will turn sour, and you took the already infected sediment and threw it into the new wort ... All in the toilet ...

Where does the infection come from in the yeast sediment?

Do you think that yeast in bags is downright sterile, or during storage, an infection could not get there?

I think it is quite clear that reusing yeast sediment is not a good idea.

Yeast washing.

This is another topic for discussion, so I will probably write about yeast washing separately.

Read, and you will understand how to wash them and is it worth doing it at all?

Finally.

If you understand that by reseeding the same sediment from time to time, you will not improve beer, but only worsen it, then it’s completely reasonable question, How to be?

The solution is simple - breed the yeast yourself. - it will cost you just a penny, and the result will be great. at home, I will also describe in detail.

Well, summarizing what has been written, I want to say that whether to reuse the yeast sediment or not is up to you. Personally, I did this only 1 time - the beer turned sour. I don't do that anymore. I use pure yeast of my own selection. It's cheap, reliable, and I'm sure it's the strain I need.

Yeast washing is simple and useful procedure, which will allow you to collect yeast after fermentation, and reuse it with your own bank on next brew. Please see how to make a starter to help you better reactivate your yeast after cold storage.

SANITATION: It is necessary to disinfect everything in this process! Successful storage of yeast depends entirely on the cleanliness of the inventory.

YEAST COLLECTION: Collect the yeast that you will be rinsing and storing the same day the fermenter is empty. This yeast layer or slurry will be the basis of everything you make next. This yeast will grow new colonies in your future brews.

RECEPTION: After intensive fermentation beer at the bottom of the fermenter, a dense yeast sediment forms, and as a rule, some liquid remains with it. Gentle stirring will loosen the yeast sediment so that you can pour the yeast suspension (sometimes in chunks) into a sanitized flask or 3 liter bottle. This will require a lot of free space. Your yeast slurry will be full of suspended matter and hop particles. At first, it will probably be very cloudy and without certain layers, although we will try to fix this!

RINSING: You need to have about 2 liters (or enough) boiled and chilled (so as not to boil the yeast)water at hand. In your flask or bottle, add enough of this water to double or triple the amount of slurry currently available. Slightly mix all the contents (suspension and water) together. Cover with sanitized foil or lid.

EXPECTATION: After about 15-20 minutes of waiting, you should be able to see some noticeable separations in the slurry. Heavier suspended particles will settle fairly quickly, creating a dark layer with a lighter layer above it. On top of these dark layers, you will have a creamy liquid layer. This is what we need, water and yeast in suspension.

DIVISION: You will need several sanitized jars available to express this liquid-filled creamy yeast. Pour the creamy liquid, separating the suspended yeast from the sediment, into as many jars as needed to separate them completely. You now have 2-4 jars full of this creamy looking liquid. Seal the jars with sanitized lids and then place in the refrigerator. After a while in the fridge you will see that the liquid is now much clearer and there is a nice bright layer of pure yeast at the bottom of each jar.

STORAGE: If your sanitation practices are good, you can keep this yeast for several months. The yeast should remain closed and refrigerated in these jars until you are ready to make a yeast starter to wake it up. It would also be a good idea to mark these jars with the yeast name, date and reuse number #1 so you can keep track of how many times this yeast has been reused. Usually, after repeated applications, the yeast will begin to mutate and its characteristics may change to a large extent. You can usually be sure to reuse the yeast up to 4-5 times before you find it degraded.

REUSE: When you want to reuse this strain of yeast, simply allow one can of washed yeast to gradually warm to room temperature and drain the liquid and add the washed yeast slurry from the bottom of the can to your new starter wort. See how to make a yeast starter.

IMPORTANT NOTES: You should always be too careful about sanitation, especially when it comes to rinsing yeast and storing it. Use a large clean glass jar (large flask or 3 liter bottle) for the steps removal and rinsing described in the procedure. glass jars is an excellent container for the separation and storage steps described in the procedure. Be sure to sanitize the lids before closing the jars for the best preservation of the yeast. Label your jars with the yeast name, date and reuse/generation number (G1, G2, ...) and so on to keep track of how many times you have washed and reused this yeast.

Yeast is expensive, so it makes sense not to buy it every time, but to reuse it. Is it reasonable? and how to wash the yeast from the rest of the sediment? and should it be done at all? Let's figure it out.

How to wash yeast.

Before asking such a question, one should understand what they need to be washed from? If you read the article about that, then this question disappears. From what to wash - it becomes clear.

Here the question involuntarily arises, but how to wash the yeast?

How to wash yeast.

In different literature there are various ways yeast washing. Someone does it with plain water, others with acid, someone with alcohol, others with antibiotics ...

Let's think about what we want to get as an output? We need to get clean yeast cells, without the admixture of protein hops and other filth.

And now we just turn on the logic and begin to sort through the options for washing the yeast.

Washing yeast with water.

A yeast cell lives in beer, eats sugar, produces carbon dioxide and other metabolic products, and then you put it in water ... what happens to the cell? Water begins to draw various chemical elements out of it, because. everything strives for balance - this is a school chemistry course ... the very beginning ... And now, instead of washing the yeast, we simply kill them, because the cell is literally torn apart by osmotic pressure. And at the output we get not a pure yeast culture, but just a mess of dead cells.

Will this roam? - Maybe. If someone survives, then cells will multiply in the wort ... if they have time, of course.

And what will happen to the bacteria if they were still in the sediment? - about the same. And by introducing such “Washed Yeast” into the wort, we harm ourselves very much.

As you can see, washing the yeast with water is completely useless.

Washing yeast with acid.

This is generally a terrible horror. What will happen to you if you lie in an acid bath? well, about the same with yeast ... Oh yes! yeast is more resistant to acidic environment! - yes, but as a result we get the same thing as with water.

Can you rinse yeast with alcohol?

It would seem that yeast produces alcohol - why not?

well, if there is a very strong solution (more than 5%), then most strains will simply die. And what is the point of such a wash?

If there is a solution of less than 5%, then again, what's the point - the same water - the same osmosis, the same yeast mixture we get at the exit.

Is it worth rinsing the yeast at all?

I believe, and this is my opinion and it may not coincide with yours, or someone else's, that washing yeast is complete nonsense.

You place a living organism from a familiar environment into a new, poorer environment. There, in complete shock, he loses everything he can lose, and if after such a procedure, the yeast cell still remains alive, you place it in an enriched environment, where it begins to frantically devour everything that it can and produce maximum energy reserves. At the same time, a bunch of everything is also produced, which is then called higher alcohols and fermentation defects ...

Just imagine, you are sitting at home, warm and cozy, and then you are out on a cold street without food and water for a month ... you eat everything that you can just survive ... and when you are finally weakened, you are placed in a grocery store where there is everything ... and all this can be taken without restrictions ... What will the body feel like? Any living organism. Yeasts are living single-celled organisms.

For this simple reason, I see no reason to wash the yeast.

How to be?

I have come to the conclusion that rinsing yeast is stupid and useless. Moreover, yeast cells can only be separated from everything else by a centrifuge, while another part of them will die. And it’s impossible to separate the living from the dead…

What if the yeast is not washed? - breed. I breed my own yeast. I bought it once and don't need it again.