Yeast Washing

I had read a bit about yeast washing online and it sounded like a bit of a hassle, required good sanitation practices (who does that?), and I wasn't sure how to determine cell counts once washed so I never followed through with it. Kind of spur of the moment I saved the yeast cake from my Saison de Noel #2 batch (still need to post). It sat in my refrigerator for a few weeks until the night I tried the first bottle and I realized that I really liked the saison yeast strain, so I re-read the instructions online and started my experiment with yeast washing.

I didn't have the patience to boil up a bunch of water and then let it cool, so I used some sanitizer to sanitize a large pyrex mixing bowl (the kind with a handle and spout). I poured in 3 bottles of bottled water and then the yeast cake that I had saved. Even though it was very thick, I could still see the layers of beer, yeast, and trub. I poured out most of the beer in the sink and then added the yeast layer and part of the trub to my pyrex bowl. Then I mixed it up with a sanitized spoon.

I covered with a piece of sanitized aluminum foil and tossed it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. After that time, I could pretty clearly see a layer of yeast and a layer of trub.

The one thing that I don't have at home are the mason jars, so I thought about similar containers that I have around the house and came up with the idea to use old 12 oz. beer bottle and then just cap them. I sanitized four 12 oz. bottles and used a sanitized funnel to pour the yeast layer into the bottles. I put a cap on each and then labeled them with a permanent marker for the yeast strain. In to the refrigerator they went for a long nap.

Time will tell if either i) leaving the yeast cake in my refrigerator in a cup covered with foil, or ii) using bottled water rather than boiling will result in the yeast being infected. Hopefully not, because I will be upset if I ruin a whole batch using bad yeast....

The finished product:

Now I just need to find out approximately how much yeast is in each bottle to try to get the pitch rate correct!

Update: I re-used my washed yeat in my Farmhouse Saison recipe (still need to post) and it seemed to work. Although I seemed to have a problem with incomplete fermentation. Not sure if that was a  result of the washed yeast or the honey in the recipe.

Home Brew Batch #13: All Grain Saison de Noel #1

The Summer always seems to get in the way of brewing with so many things to do away from home. By the time I started to think about my next batch it was already late August. I was trying to think ahead for something for the holidays and I came across a Saison de Noel recipe online. I adapted it as follows for a 2.5 gallon batch:

5 lbs. Belgian Pilsner Malt
0.25 lbs. Aromatic
0.125 lbs Carafa III
0.125 Cara Munich
0.50 lbs. Dextrose
0.50 lbs Belgian Candi Syrup 80 L
0.50 oz. Magnum Hops 15.2% AA
1/2 vial White Labs WLP 566 Saison II
1/2 tsp. Yeast Nutrient
1/4 tsp. Irish Moss
2.5 oz. Priming Sugar

I started with 3 gallon of strike water at 160 f. The mash started almost exactly at 150 f and held its heat
well. The sparge method I tried on this one was to heat 0.5 gallons of sparge water to 168 f and then I poured it over the grain bag as it was sitting on a colander suspended over my boil kettle.

After boiling for 15 minutes, I added the Magnum hops at 60 minutes. At 45 minutes I added the Dextrose and Belgian Candi Sugar (I didn't add them at 60 minutes because I was trying to avoid some carmelization, but this recipe is dark enough color and had lots of malty flavor, so it probably didn't matter too much). At 15 minutes I added the yeast nutrient and irish moss. Then cooled, pitched yeast, and let ferment for 2 weeks in the primary.



Update: I gave away a growler of this one and a couple of bottles, so there wasn't a whole lot left for me to enjoy after those. The beer was good, but not as memorable as the second batch. I wonder now if the yeast pitch rate was way too low. I tried to split a vial of yeast, so maybe it was unequal. For this high of gravity I definitely should have gone with a full vial per 2.5 gallon batch. The only other issue I can think of was that it fermented a bit too warm.

Home Brew - Batches #1 - #9

It's kind of funny. One of my original ideas for starting this blog was to document my home brewing exploits. Here I am a few months in and I don't have even one post about my brewing. So here we go....

A little over two years ago my wife made the mistake of getting me a really nice starter home brew kit for Christmas.

I hoped to have the motivation here to go back and give a little detail on the batches that I have brewed up in the past, but I can't seem to quite get there.

So I though I would just make a list of the batches that I completed prior to starting this blog. These were mostly packaged extract kits from my local home brew shop O'Shea Brewing (Laguna Niguel, CA):

Batch #1 - Nut Brown - my first home brewed beer, so of course it was great!

Batch #2 - All Citra IPA - this one was insane! When you popped the bottle open it smelled like slicing open a grapefruit. Still might be my favorite home brew batch of all time.

Batch #3 - Hefeweizen - changed the yeast to White Labs Hefeweizen IV (WLP 380) and fermented a bit warm. The banana aroma was off the chart. This one fermented so fast that it actually blew the top off of my fermenter bucket. I thought it would be contaminated, but it turned out just fine.

Batch #4 - Red - wasn't my favorite at first, but over time it got better.

Batch #5 - Belgian Pale - turned out nice. Finally got tired of bottling with the 12 oz. bottles that came with my brewing kit, so I switched to 22's.

Batch #6 - Imperial Nut Brown - couldn't get this one to carbonate. I even tried popping a cap and adding a little extra yeast to one bottle. That didn't work. Turned out that the bottles were just too cold. They were sitting on a tile floor in my pantry right next to an exterior wall. Moved the bottles to an interior pantry and they were ready to go in a week!

Batch #7 - Belgian Wit - Hoegaarden clone for my wife. Turned out really clean, but not too much orange peel or coriander came through. I actually submitted this one for the OC Fair home brew competition, but I didn't plan ahead and the bottles didn't have enough time to carbonate. Better luck next year...

Batch #8 - Belgian Saison - Liked this one a lot. Fermented a bit warm and it seemed to have some good spiciness to it.

Batch #9 - Oatmeal Stout - my grain sack for steeping was too small so I didn't get a good soaking of the grains because the oatmeal swelled up. It ended up tasting OK, but was a bit light on the flavor and maltiness.















I learned a ton making these beers, and luckily didn't have any major screw ups, so I decided to take my confidence and start with all grain batches...