Yeast

[Dustin Kerr]

I have heard a little bit about re-using your yeast cake on another beer. I have a Belgium Wyeast Belgian Strong.  

My question is What would the best way to  store my yeast cake? IE container, process to get it there? 

Any reciepies that would be good with that type of yeast?

Thanks

 Dusy

[Hamish Jones]

All I do is fill up some glass jars with boiling water and chill in the fridge, then when your ready to go pour a couple of jars in fermenter, sterilise jars and lids as soon as you've emptied swirl the yeast cake and fill the jars then I just chuck them in the fridge for later use, the yeast will settle out to the bottom,

Then when your ready to go take it out of the fridge and shake a few times while it's warming to brew temp then sanitise and in it goes. or you can make up a starter with it but I have never bothered and it takes off pretty well anyways,

No recipe but I have been thinking about something Belgian as I have a chimay blue yeast culturing on the stir plate at them moment that has just started to krausen

[Crusader-Rob]

basically what Hamish said.

I also sanitise my jars as well with starsan, just an additional precaution.

[Paul Finney]

I boil up the jars the night before bottling, lids and all. Scoop them out with tongs with the water in them and then put them in the fridge. Once you have finished bottling pour the water from the jars into the yeast slurry. Give it a swirl to get it all into suspension. Then leave it for about 5 mins (the dead yeast and hop matter should drop out faster than the living yeast) and then pour back into the jars.

If you are saving yeast it pays to remember how long you have had them, what gravity beer they were in, and what yeast it is (as once you get a fridge full it can be hard to remember!)

The gravity is important as if you have used the yeast in a 6% beer it will potentially struggle to maintains it's flavours in a 4% beer. The standard rule is to step up in gravity. For instance, I used my London ale yeast in a 4.5% porter, then I saved 4 jars from that. 2 went into an ESB, one into a Stout, and one into an IPA.

Generally I make a starter just to get the yeast active and ready for going into the main wort, and to test they are still living as normally I have them in the fridge for longer than 2 weeks.