Yeast Harvesting Time.

How to harvest your yeast and wash it.

After you have either  racked all your beer in to secondary or bottles you can harvest your yeast.  

Okay, you say you just did that. Well look at the bottom of your carboy or bucket. You see all the leftover stuff down there. That is your trub and dormant yeast. You want the yeast, Not the trub. So we have to wash it.

How do you wash yeast?

Here are the steps to follow to harvest and wash your Yeast.

1. Get a pot of water boiling and put some Mason jars in it.
2. After a good boil (10 to 15 minutes) allow the water to cool.
3. Take the cooled water and pour 2 mason jars worth of water in to the fermenter with the yeast trub cake.
4. Take your fermenter and swirl it around until well mixed.
5. Let the liquid settle for 20 minutes.
6. Drain liquid in to clean boiled jars.
7. Let the jars settle ( put in to the refrigerator to speed up settling.)
8. Pour in just the top two layers in to a new jar. Leave the thick grayish brown stuff in old jar.(It's just trub.)
9. In new jar with what you just poured add around one cup of the boiled water (cooled) and swirl to mix.
10. Let the jar settle again and you will have good yeast to use.

Here is what I got from my last brew.

   What you see is. The top is the wash water, then there is a nice layer of white yeast and the rest is a mix of yeast and trub.

Good luck to you in your harvesting.

Brew today, See you tomorrow.