Brewing Experiment: Reusing Yeast Via Yeast Rinsing

My next brewing experiment was with yeast rinsing, a process where you can harvest active yeast from the sediment at the bottom of a carboy, store it in your fridge, and re-use it to brew another beer. This experiment was in-part born out of necessity as I had screwed up on my last batch of beer and didn't want the Bell's Oberon yeast that I'd harvested from bottles to go to waste. 

I'm not going to post complete instructions here as there are many other sites with great instructions. As in all things brewing: good sanitation is important, and with yeast washing in particular using deoxygenated water sanitized by boiling and returned to room temperature (or the temp of the yeast in the carboy) is key. Again, see one of the sites linked above for details.



Here are a few pics I snapped of the process:

Here's the carboy after I've siphoned off the beer and added sterilized
room-temperature water to rinse the yeast.

At first, there's not much to see.

After letting it settle for a while, layers appear. The milky layer in the middle
is what we want.

I poured as much of that layer as I could into a
sanitized gallon jar.

Which then also separated after sitting for a bit.

The layers become distinct quickly.

I carefully poured the layer that contained the yeast into four smaller jars.

A day later, layers appeared in the refrigerated
pint jars too.

Here's the yeast after a few weeks of refrigeration. All
ready to go!

Yeast rinsing is pretty easy to do, and requires just a bit a planning ahead of time. Tools required are minimal and yeast is pricey, so this could be a way to slightly reduce brewing costs. It's also rewarding to brew using your own yeast.