Yeast Washing

I prefer to use liquid yeast in all my brews. While dry yeast will give you enough viable yeast in a dry packet, it doesn't have the consistency from batch to batch that liquid yeast does. However there is a price difference between liquid yeast (~$7) and dry yeast (~$1). In order to start saving a bit of cash, I've decided to start washing my yeast.

Yeast washing is a process by which the yeast is seperated from the trub. The trub is a mixture of hop remnants, dead yeast cells, and other unwanted particulate. By seperating out the trub from the yeast, we are able to reuse our yeast for future batches.

Step 1

Boiling the Jars/Water

Full Sanitized Jars

Seperating Trub in Carboy

The process for washing yeast is quite simple. The first step is to sanitize a few large (I use half gallon) mason jars, as well as 2 or 3 pint jars. I used our boil pot as well as some reverse osmosis water. I boiled the jars and lids for approximately 20minutes. After the boil, I promptly covered the jars with the lids, and set them aside for a day to cool. The nice part about this step is it can be done anytime before the racking in the next step.

Step 2

After racking the beer out of the secondary, I pour the water from all the mason jars into the carboy. The carboy is then shaken in order to agitate the sediment off the bottom. I then lay the carboy on its side. In 20 to 30 minutes trub will have fallen to the bottom of the carboy's side. It is at this point that the carboy is slowly poured into the larger mason jar. The goal of the pouring is to leave most (if not all) of the trub behind in the carboy. Note that the basic premise to this is that trub is heavier then yeast, therefore the trub will fall to the bottom, while the yeast is still suspended. After filling the larger mason jar, I put the jar into the fridge to accelerate the yeast dropping to the bottom. I try to keep the jar refrigerated for at least 48 hours, but for this batch I kept it in there for about a week.

Step 3

After most of the yeast has settled to the bottom of the gallon jar, you should be able to see 3 different layers. The top liquid layer is the mixture of beer and water. The second layer is the yeast, and the bottom layer is the little bit of trub that made it in from the carboy. You can see to the left the before and after pictures of the gallon jars. When the water/beer mixture starts to become translucent, it is time to transfer over to the space saving pint mason jars.

Step 4

Seperating Trub in Gallon Jars

Filled Pint Jars

In order to save space in the fridge, I have to consolidate yeast. This step involves decanting off the water/beer mixture from the gallon mason jars, and then transferring them to the smaller mason jars. This is essentially the same as step two just done on a smaller scale.

The yeast will eventually settle to the bottom of the pint jars in the same way it settled to the gallon jar. This yeast then can be stored for a period of months to be used in another brew. However, reused yeast should likely not be pitched as it is. It is best to create a nice sized starter to make sure you have enough viable yeast. The Mr Malty website has a nice calculator for determining how large of a starter you'll need based on your beer.

Lagerhead Turtle Recipe

So I put together the Lagerhead Turtle recipe a few days ago, and brewed it last night. Here's the basic recipe:

5.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 46.51 %
4.00 lb White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM) Grain 37.21 %
1.00 lb Wheat, Torrified (1.7 SRM) Grain 9.30 %
0.25 lb Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM) Grain 2.33 %

60 min 1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %]
7 min 1.00 oz Tettnang [4.50 %]
0 min 0.50 cup Lemon Balm

Add pastuerized honey at high krausen

Primary fermentation (14 days at 50.0 F)
Diacetyl rest (3 days at 60.0 F)
Secondary fermentation (14 days at 52.0 F)
Lager (60 days at 35.0 F)

Full Recipe

My father-in-law, David Roche, helped out with brewing this beer. (It was a great bonding experience! :-) ) We ended up a few points short of the pre-boil gravity. I have a feeling, I didn't get my sparge hot enough, and may have been a bit too warm on my mash temps.

There are conflicting ideas on how to pitch the yeast for a lager. Some say that cooling the wort to fermentation temp then pitch work best, while others prefer to pitch near ale temps, then cool down slowly to fermentation temp. For simplicity sake, I chose the latter. However, doing this will produce enhanced diacetyl (buttery tones) to the beer, so we'll be doing a diacetyl rest at the end of the primary fermentation to allow the yeast to clean up the diacetyl produced.

This will also be my first beer with honey, and herbs. We added the lemon balm at flameout, and will add local honey to the primary during high krausen. I'm not quite sure how this will turn out yet, but I'm excited to try. I don't want to get too strong of a lemon flavor in there, but if I can't discern any after primary fermentation, I may dry hop some more lemon balm in the secondary.

Prost!

Jeremy

New Local Brewery!

I was paging through the April/May edition of Southern Brew News tonight at our favorite pizza shop, when I saw a brief article that caught my eye. Every issue, they have a "What's Pouring In" section that describes brewery happenings across the SE states. In the NC section, it stated that a new brewery was under construction in Eastern NC. The name of the company is Mother Earth Brewing. They're eventually going to institue eco-friendly practices into their brewing. They have a slogan of "Peace, Love, and Beer" which is quite simillar to what Tim and I envisioned as a slogan of our eventual joint brewery dreams!

Mother Earth Brewing will be located in downtown Kinston, NC. The downtown area of Kinston has experienced some hard times, and as such, most of the downtown area seems very depressed. This brewery will be a first step of many to hopefully revitalize the historic downtown area.

It looks as though the first beer they've brewed was their Kolsch...which ironically was the first Leah and I brewed! :-)

I can't wait to see what this new brewery has to offer. They are posting updates on their progress on the Mother Earth Brewing website. I definitely wish their operation well, and can't wait to visit!

Prost!

Jeremy

Lagerhead Turtle

So since the weather down here is starting to get really hot, I've gotten the urge to make a good lawnmower beer (A light refreshing beer for hot sunny days). Yesterday at work, I came up with the idea for "Lagerhead Turtle". (Thank you Scott for sparking the idea!)

A Loggerhead Sea Turtle

Loggerhead sea turtles are on the endangered species list, and are found all over the NC coast when it comes time to lay eggs. When Duder and I went out fishing on the Capt Stacy head boat, we were able to see 2 giant Loggerheads eating off the side of the boat! It was quite a site to see!

So for the next week, I'll be working on coming up with this recipe. This will be my first lager! I'm excited to try another new aspect of the brewing process. I will post when I have the recipe completed

In other brew news, Leah and I are going to be leaving next weekend to go to Katie and Nereus' wedding near the Twin Cities. While there, we'll be spending the first few days at my sister's house near Chippewa Falls, WI. And of course NO trip to Chippewa Falls can be complete without the trip to the Leinenkugel's Brewery!! This will be our third time taking the tour, however, I'm sure now with the brewing knowledge I've gained, I'll be able to learn so much more!!

While in the cities, we'll be staying at the luxurious Radisson Plaza Hotel in downtown Minneapolis! It's an extremely nice hotel, and thanks to Hotwire, it only cost us $59 a night!! The best part about the hotel....within walking distance to the local Rock Bottom brewpub! There was many a happy hour spent at the Rock Bottom in Bethesda when I worked in DC. While this won't be the same, I still can't wait to have a Big Horn Nut Brown or perhaps some of their banana El Hefe!