saveing yeast

[swoss72]

Can I save the yeast from a finished ferment and reuse at a later date sorry if that sounds stupid but the things one thinks about... Lol

[thatguy1313]

Yep. Read Uncle Jesses Simple Sour Mash recipe in tried and true. If you're gonna be waiting a while before starting the next ferment you can freeze the trub. The yeast will go dormant and you may want to add a small starter to wake em up but it'll be fine.

[Ferment_It]

Mutations and infections can build up over the course of a fermentation, so unless you are immediately piggybacking your ferments like UJSSM or a gumballhead reusing yeast is not advised. Best way is to save yeast is from your starters.

Make your starter as usual for your ferment, but make another batch of media and let it cool down to room temp before you pitch your yeast. When you pitch em in the fermenter leave a couple ml's down in the bottom of your Erlenmeyer, or whatever your using, and add the fresh cooled media back to it. In a few days take your new starter culture - it should be very turbid- and stick it in the fridge. Its a good idea to transfer it to a smaller container. In order to maintain the most possible viable cells you will want to have the cold and stable temps - ie. back of bottom shelf is good and door is bad; avoid light; limit head space in your bottle -O2 is bad for dormant cells; and don't let the culture freeze -freezing will cause ice crystals to form and cell membranes to rupture.
When you are ready for your next ferment make up a new batch of media and cool, pour off most of the clear spent media, swirl around the clumped yeast on the bottom of your container and add it to your new starter media.

I'll do this 4 or 5 times before I get worried about mutations taking over my cultures. I should tell you that I'm a microbiologist by trade and likely have better trained in sterile technique and maintaining culture purity then most, as such your mileage may differ. It'd suck real hard lose a whole batch of AG to save $3 worth of yeast...

Best of luck.

[700G]

I do something similar to this, it saves a ton of money on yeast: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/yeast-harve ... roach.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

This will be helpful if you decide to do the same: http://www.brewersfriend.com/yeast-pitc ... alculator/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[dstaines]

The easiest way to reuse your yeast is to pour a new batch of wort onto the yeast cake from the last batch. Don't even need to clean the fermenter. This does require you to have you new batch ready to go right when you're racking, if you let the wort or the dirty fermenter sit around your risk of infection goes up. Only do this if your fermenter is otherwise very clean besides the yeast cake at the bottom, dried on stuff on the walls invites infection.

The link to the Homebrew Talk tutorial is a great one, I use that technique to recycle my brewing yeast. Kept in the fridge the shelf life is several months. I only do this for yeast that I use very frequently, because it's a fair amount of work and yeast is generally very cheap. It's most worthwhile to do with the liquid vials of yeast, which can run me $8 instead of $2.50 for the dried stuff. Using this technique definitely requires building a starter.

[swoss72]

Thank you all for the info verryy useful

[Killrb13]

Ive made slants before to make starters with and to be honest, while it may be fun and save a few bucks it turns out to be a PITA... I buy fresh now, less chance for infections and less messy.