Man Skirt
Brewing Co.
What is yeast washing?
After you've made a batch of beer the yeast will have settled to the bottom, along with a layer of trub. Trub is made of protein bits, hop parts, dead yeast and whatnot. In order to save this yeast for re-use we want to separate the yeast from the trub.
Most folks only wash liquid yeast, since liquid yeast is much more expensive than dry yeast.
The first step is to prepare water and containers. Normally I would use four, 1-pint Mason jars and one half-gallon growler. In the photo you can see I replaced two of the pint jars with a quart jar.
The night before you'll be washing your yeast, bring about two gallons of water to a boil in a large pot. Put all of your containers in there to boil along with it - this will sterilize your equipment and boil off much of the oxygen in the water, helping the yeast to go dormant in your fridge.
Fill all of your containers with the boiled water and put the lids on. Let them cool a bit then pop them in the fridge.
When you're ready, rack the beer out of your fermenter and get everything out of the fridge. Pour the water from all of containers into your fermenter. I'm using a sanitized funnel.
