Reusing yeast

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