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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
  Arkansas State Fair Competition ("Ken Haycook")
  RE: Reusing yeast (Calvin Perilloux)
  RE: Reusing yeast (Gabe Toth)


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Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 09:49:00 -0500
From: "Ken Haycook" <k.haycook at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Arkansas State Fair Competition

This year's ASF HB Competition will follow this schedule:

September 9th: Begin receiving entries at Arkansas State Fair Grounds

September 23rd:  Last date to receive entries at Arkansas State Fair Grounds

October 21th: 1st round Judging 5:00pm 10:00pm, Arkansas State Fair Grounds

October 22nd:   2nd Round Judging 5:00pm 10:00pm, Arkansas State Fairgrounds


October 23rd:   Best of Show Judging 1:00pm 10:00pm, Arkansas State
Fairgrounds

BOS Winners can earn up to $100. See our website at
www.centralarkansasfermenters.com for more details. 

BTW, this competition is still restricted to Arkansas Residents only. 

Ken Haycook
501-223-0030




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Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:51:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: Calvin Perilloux <calvinperilloux at yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: Reusing yeast

Glyn,

I do a lot of yeast repitching.  It saves money, of course, 
but as other posters like Dave Houseman and Bill Pierce 
pointed out, the main benefit is that repitching can give 
you a very healthy fermentation for higher OG beers.
That's a real benefit when brewing a Doppelbock, for 
example.  You get a cleaner fermentation and better
attenuation with more yeast at the beginning, and the
most practical way for homebrewers to do that is to start
with a "small" beer and use the yeast for the "big" beer.

As for the mechanics of it...

Sometime I do an immediate repitch; other times a repitch
days later with saved yeast.

If the initial beer is a "clean" one with a clean yeast cake 
and not much trub, AND it also exhibits very clean fermentation,
I will pitch a new batch of wort straight on top of the yeast
cake in the same fermenter.  When I do this, I drain the first 
beer off of the yeast only very shortly before the next wort 
hits it.

If that initial beer is loaded with hops and trub, 
then I pull as much of yeast out as I can using yeast
rinsing techniques, similar to the process that Mike Dixon 
shows in his article that lives on in the bowels of HBD:

Check his article: http://hbd.org/carboy/yeast_washing.htm

If I'm not brewing the same day I rack, I store the yeast 
in an Erlenmeyer flask (or brewpub's White Labs yeast bottle)
very cold until I can brew.  I'm reluctant to rack beer off 
of yeast and then leave that yeast in the fermenter without 
"food" and exposed to oxygen at room temperature for 
a day or more while it awaits my next brew.

If you want to simply repitch from a batch of current yeast, 
I wouldn't hold the yeast more than a couple of weeks.
Various yeast strains hold up better than others, and
if the yeast has been kept for more than a week, I always 
decant some liquid off and smell AND taste it before 
I consider whether to repitch the yeast as-is or not.
(Ideally, I'd use a hemocytometer and check the viability
counts, too, but I've been too lazy.)

I've found that with proper yeast handling, yeast can 
actually be kept at 32F for months.  I've even held some
types for about a year in Erlenmeyer flasks.  Is it still
pitchable?  Not at that point!  It usually reeks of autolysis,
and the wort/beer taste is even worse!  But you can wash it
and make another starter and get it going again.  I've done 
this with year-old yeast and had award-winning results in 
the subsequent beers.

I initially started reusing, storing, washing/rinsing, and 
rejuvenating yeast to save money, but now it's partly just
because it helps me keep a preferred yeast strain that might 
only be available seasonally.  And sometimes I just can't 
help it -- I don't want to toss out a liter of healthy,
active, clean yeast!

That's just the tip of the iceberg.  You could write a book 
about yeast re-use, storage, and washing.  (As some have.)
Just search the HBD archives for more info.  

Calvin Perilloux
Middletown, Maryland, USA



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Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:59:34 -0600
From: Gabe Toth <gabetoth at hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: Reusing yeast


David Houseman mentioned reusing the yeast bed from one beer for subsequent
batches, and I'd like to pick his (and anyone else's) brain about this.

Racking one beer and immediately pitching new wort directly onto the
existing bed has been my practice for a few years, but I've always
wondered about it's limitations.

Does anyone else worry or wonder about the effects of the trub that's in
there? And what are the upper limits of reusing yeast with this approach?

With good sanitation practices and yeast nutrient added to every brew,
I've gone well over 20 batches with the same yeast. The larger population
seems less likely to mutate, or at least any mutation gets crowded out.

Eventually, I start feeling like i'm pushing my luck and change to a
new, fresh yeast. I just, last week, phased out two yeasts, a kolsch
and a belgian, that i started using last summer and were still going
strong. But it seems to me that, as long as the system stays sanitary
and the yeast receives proper nutrition, the process could go on
ad infinitum.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Gabe Toth

P.S. I want to add, on my sixth attempt at sending this, that it was an
incredibly frustrating, hourlong process of sending, getting bounced, and
re-editing to get my text just right so that it wouldn't get rejected.

Whoever edits this edition of the digest can remove this from the actual email
that'll get sent out; I just wanted to say that this is an aggravating
and obtuse system, and I'll think very hard about whether future
submissions are worth the frustration.
 		 	   		  


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