Reusing Yeast Without Washing: Is It Recommended?

There is a bit of confusion when it comes to whether or not you should wash your yeast before pitching it for your next batch.

What are the benefits to reusing yeast? And what are the benefits to rinsing or washing it?

And finally, should you be reusing yeast without washing it?

All great questions that require a bit of an in depth understanding of what exactly is happening here.

Yeast and Its Powers

The powers of yeast are mighty.

A single celled eukaryotic living organism, it has been around since virtually life began on this planet. As a member of the fungus family, which was indeed the first life form on earth, yeast lays claim to a long history.

And in that entire time, it has had a single job – find sugar, consume it, and convert it to alcohol, carbon dioxide, and hundreds of other micronutrients.

Yeast did this on its own for millennia, simply finding ripe or rotting fruit and fermenting it to what we would call today “wine.”

And humans have been taking advantage of, and delighting in, this completely natural process for as long as we have been humans. Indeed, for perhaps longer.

Anthropologists have discovered tribes of monkeys that will wait for ripe or rotting fruit to ferment before eating it.

They have also found tribes that actually tap palm trees for their sap and then wait for the fermentation process to make palm wine, enjoying drunken weekends during which the monkeys end up fighting over the last dregs of alcohol.

So, it requires no stretch of the imagination to see how humans, and our apelike ancestors, have also been enjoying fermentation for thousands of years.

Yeast and Beer

The story of yeast and beer is only slightly more complicated than the super simple process of winemaking.

As you know, beer is made from grain, and grain does not really offer sugar for yeast to convert.

Of course, yeast will take advantage of the sugars deeply hidden in starches, which is how we have leavened bread, but the alcohol content will not be very high.

In fact, anthropologists suspect that the first beer was made by accident. A woman was likely out harvesting her grain when a storm struck and she took cover, leaving her grain sitting out to be rained on.

After several days, she returned to find grain water that was actively fizzing and bubbling.

Never one to waste resources and knowing the water to be freshly fallen from the sky, she would have served the water to her family, only to find it not only delicious but also offering a slightly euphoric effect.

From there, families and then entire empires began making beer intentionally as a nutritious alternative to potentially toxic river water with a low alcohol content of perhaps 2% or lower.

And then there was beer.

For the brewer then, it was a big of alchemy to figure out how to first roast the grain, which would convert the starches to sugars, and then to crack the grain before boiling and steeping, which would expose those sugars to the water.

Of course, then herbs were added to cut down on sweetness, and the “wort” was left out to the elements for fermentation.

It would not be long then before brewers picked up on the fact that these clumps of debris “flocculating” on the surface of their fermented brew were the agents responsible for that magnificent beverage.

From there, they could simply harvest the clumps, rinse them, and reuse them, gaining more control over the brewing process and offering more consistency of flavor to their loyal customers.

Click here to Get access For Free to a detailed manual (25 pages) describing all the steps of the yeast repitching process!

Washing, Rinsing, Reusing: The Necessity and Benefits

Now, rinsing the yeast seems like a no brainer, and it is.

Rinsing yeast is just what it sounds like – you merely crop the white stuff out of the remaining solid debris after you have drained out your beer, and then you add it to clean water in a sanitized container.

The “white stuff” is your live and active yeast.

The browner or creamier stuff is likely dead yeast cells and slurry.

And the deeper brown stuff is the “trub,” or other solid sediment left over after brewing.

When you rinse your yeast in clean water, you are merely removing all other dead and useless debris, which is highly beneficial, while perhaps not “necessary” or at least not “urgent.”

Nothing is wrong with simply cropping your yeast and reusing it without rinsing it, but you will be pitching in unnecessary and nonessential ingredients to your batch.

And rinsing your yeast is a very easy process, so why not go ahead and do it?

The benefits of reusing your yeast are myriad. Yeast is not only still alive and active after fermentation, but you are much more likely to have even more live and active yeast cells once they have fermented as fermentation is one way yeast will reproduce.

So, your batches of beer may get better and better with each reuse.

Again, you might as well discard dead yeast cells, solid debris like hops and grains, and anything else getting in the way of pure, rinsed yeast.

However, “washing” your yeast is an entirely different matter.

To wash yeast, you will have to crop it from your vessel and then literally wash it in a food grade phosphoric acid solution that will not only “decontaminate” it but also kill off a lot of your live and active yeast cells, actually lowering viability.

Further, you will not actually be killing off all wild bacteria and yeast that may be present in this batch as the chemical solution is food grade and designed to protect at least some of the life in your yeast.

Thus, the benefits of washing seem minimal compared to the cost, and you can absolutely reuse your yeast without washing it first. In fact, many brewers will recommend it.

Cheers!

Yeast activity monitoring is essential for optimizing the process of yeast harvesting and repitching! If you’re interested in finding out how you can use our technology to control fermentation and monitor your yeast, save work hours and improve the cost-efficiency of your business, drop us a line at [email protected] or check out the product pages (for beer or wine):

Also, you can now get access to a fully functional demo account to test our Web App. Completely free of charge and with no commitment to purchase.

Sources:

  1. https://www.schoolhousebeer.com/2021/02/15/how-to-wash-or-rinse-beer-yeast/
  2. https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/yeast-washing-yeast-rinsing-whats-difference/
  • Publications

    Best Pattern Recognition Software

    A review of the best pattern recognition software for those interested in the various applications, including colony counts, bacteria identification, and more.

    Read more
  • Publications

    Petri Dish Bacteria Identification Chart: Why Use One

    This article is dedicated to those in the lab wondering whether a comprehensive petri dish bacteria identification chart could make their job easier.

    Read more
  • Publications

    Is Bioethanol Good for the Environment?

    Have you been asking the question, “Is bioethanol good for the environment?” This article describes the role of bioethanol from an environmental perspective.

    Read more
  • 0
      0
      Your Cart
      Your cart is empty