How To Harvest and Wash Yeast for Homebrewing

In this tutorial video we show you how to harvest, wash, and save yeast for homebrewing. This is an important process to know if you want to save money or preserve unique strains of yeast. We're doing this in order to save some wild yeast so we can use it for future beers. The equipment needed to follow along with this tutorial is very basic and affordable. Most homebrewers should already have the equipment in this video or equipment that can easily be substituted. We learned this process largely from the Chop & Brew homebrewing channel, we highly recommend you check them out to learn more about homebrewing. This process starts with leftover beer and dregs from the bottom of a fermenter that contained a sour brown ale that was fermented with wild yeast from wood. In the next video we show you how to make a yeast starter. You have to make a yeast starter in order to use your harvested and washed yeast to ferment a beer. Check out the resources below for the second part of this series, our log beer videos, brewing equipment, and an interesting article about a yeast company that is reviving ancient and rare strains of yeast.

#wildyeast #brewingonabudget

[adamr]

I do mine the same way, I recently grabbed a jar of washed yeast from the back of my fridge. Was sitting there for 1.5 years. I'm happy to say that it still picked up in my starter and brewed awesome beer with it.

[Miodowy]

There is one more reason to reuse yeast - they are "stronger" and more resistant. Such yeasts are good for very dense and strong beers such as RIS or barley wine. In addition, they start working quicker.

[eastindiaV]

This is like the most important part of the process. Yeast seems to adapt to the way you treat it and gets better the more you use it.

[mattxander]

Thank you for a very formal and educational video without shenanigans. That has its place, but 'yeast washing' led me to this video and it was perfectly to the point with good production value.

[benmartin]

Awesome! Very good information. Sorry for the long post... I work as sourodugh+ bread baker at a brewery in Pittsburgh, and the senior brewer gave some of their house kviek. I used it 1 month ago to brew some mead (actually cyser or honey-cider as I brew with apple juice and a local raw honey which helps add some body to the mead)(This batch: 5 gallons (dry)hopped mead, 1 gallon of basic mead for mixing, and 1 gallon of peach mead). Target was 9ish% ABV. Apple juice kicked that up a little. One batch had some peaches added in primary, and its ABV was a tad bit higher (the other flavor being a new zealand hop varietal (nelson sauvin) hopped mead; the brewery gets a ton of hop samples which they kick down to me!). Any-who. This mead home-brew project is a good candidate for yeast wash. I am a very visual learner so videos like this are awesome.
Going to start my second batch this weekend.

Brew-day Monday:
3, 1 gallon batches to test the washed yeast technique:

1) Mango/peach/ginger,
2) Strawberry bochet*,
3) Cherry/Hibiscus (viking blood)
my goal is to make a sort of fusion of 'mead' and the ole juicy NEIPA. For home consumption.

*'Jam' style mead: cook the strawberries down at 200-220 F. for an hour or so, add the honey with the buzzed/strained strawberry stuff and cook that for one hour (200-220 F). Then make your mead as you do.
*Apple juice is store bought but the added fruits are whole processed and juiced, lightly strained. Pulp is fine. Cloudy mead as a home-brewer is not a problem. Will add less-acidic citruses sometimes thought the kviek flavor is fairly tropica/citrus (prefer clementines, mandarian, blood, valencia, etc) and dried fancy yellow raisins (sultanas) as yeast nutrient (plus real yeast nutrient too); but I avoid citric acid/wine tannin/back sweeteners, the like.

WATER/HOPS/HONEY/YEAST.

[urskrik]

That beard is pure viking gold! thanks for the wisdom, Hail Odin!

[tomasluna]

Chop & brew is where I learned how to crazy

[mikeschroeder]

Erlenmeyer flasks are great for the initial decanting, makes it really easy to separate...

[LiveSDanielsen]

Cool, this was very helpful for me. I am brewing wild mead and have been looking for such a method. Thanks a lot!

[leongonzales]

I just wanted to say that everyone @ clawhammer are great people and great home brewer's I hope to see more great beer Brewing videos.

[RedSntDK]

Awesome, exactly what I was looking for. So many different videos about yeast that it was hard to find the right one 😂.

[nfqdmby]

Brewgrass homebrew louisville ky. turned me on to your channel and said your channel was good info and straight to the point, which is what I need. Thanks to both of you and keep up the great work.

[MikeP]

I've washed yeast for years, and still do, but now n days, more times than not, I'll just make a larger starter, and harvest half of it into jars for future batches. Cost a little extra $ in DME, but saves me the hassle of boiling jars and the time it takes to wash yeast

[peepalfarm]

Why can't beer be done in continuous brew method like kombucha or water kefir?

[pippoquota]

thank you, all is perfectly clear
one thing I want to ask you is "how much of this harvested yeast can we use for our next 23liter batch?"
bye from Sicily

[jeffgrey]

I culture my yeast onto agar slants. Keep it in the fridge and grab some off the slant with inoculation loop and drop it into my starter. Much more sterile. Yeast stains modify themselves if you try to wash them.

[muninrob]

Interesting, I always start by adding sugar or honey to the 1st rinse, shaking it up and seeing if it bubbles. If it does, I proceed as seen in this video - if there is no action, I assume the yeast is dead (exceeded ABV limit, starved too long, or over chilled) and dump it straight into the compost.

[vassagius]

Cool idea to save expensive turbo yeast

[Actunify]

Thank you great illustration. Though seeing the soapy bubbles in the jars after sanitizing makes me cringe.

[HomeBrewingTV]

If you want another way of doing the same thing check out our video on yeast washing.