When I had finished bottling my pale ale on Monday night, I had a couple of inches of yeast slurry in the bottom of my fermenter. I’d heard previously that you can re-use this sludge to make another brew so I thought that I would look into it in a little more detail. Well, as usual, Google is my friend…
So yes, it can be done!
The following are some of the recommendations that I have found:
- Sanitise, sanitise, sanitise!
- Use the last bit of beer in the fermenter to mix up the slurry in to suspension before pouring it into bottles/containers.
- Use plastic bottles to store yeast slurry in. Even in the fridge, yeast tends to give off CO2 and with glass bottles, there is a chance that the bottles make explode.
- Label your bottles wiith dates, yeast types and generation.
- Don’t re-use your yeast more than 2 – 3 times/generations.
- Be careful when opening these bottles as the pressure builds up inside them and the contents may explode on opening.
- Re-use the yeast within 2 – 3 months for ensure that it is still active. Any longer and you may need to make a starter.
- Always pitch up ie. brew a higher OG beer than the beer that produced the yeast.
- Save yeast from lower gravity beers. Yeast from higher gravity beers (over 1.060) tend to give off flavours.
Read more about yeast re-use here: http://www.mikebeer.net/reuseyeast.htm
Read more about yeast washing here: http://snurl.com/yeastwashing
2 thoughts on “Reusing yeast”
Sean
(6 April 2011 - 02:51)I’m the founder/moderator for Punk Domestics (www.punkdomestics.com), a community site for those of use obsessed with, er, interested in DIY food, including homebrewing. It’s sort of like Tastespotting, but specific to the niche. I’d love for you to submit this to the site. Good stuff!
Del
(7 April 2011 - 09:28)Submitted!