Washing highly flocculant yeast

[Manu]

Hi all,
I came across an old post regarding flocculant yeast and how to wash it and reuse it. I think that I may have an useful technique  that actually works in order to separate flocculant yeast from thrub.

I started with a standard procedure, added a couple of litres of boiled water (and cooled, obviously) to the cake. I, shaked it and mixed it till all became a slurry. I let it settle for a couple of minutes and filled two containers with it. I left a bit of thrub and solids at the bottom of the fermenter.

Now, that's where the fun starts.

At this stage you need to use a blender or similar appliance. First you sanitise your blender and then pour the content of one slurry container into it (just fill half the volume of the blender, it will foam a bit). Blend it for a minute or so and pour the mix into a sanitised jar. Let it set for a couple of minutes and you will see a lower layer of thrub, a liquid layer in the middle and a foamy later at the top. Yeast would be in suspension in the middle layer and in the foam. Top crop the foam and pour the liquid into a sanitised container. Let it settle in the fridge for a few hours and you'll get a nice batch of yeast ready to be reused.

I attached an image of container with Cal V that I washed last week. I hope it's an useful tip.

All the best

Manu

[Eoin]

I used a blender once and had the impression that it had killed the yeast. This was for bread, but it did not rise at all and showed no bubbling at proving stage... This was a block of fresh yeast.

[Manu]

The size of yeast cell is vastly smaller than the blade of the blender and the yeast is in suspension in a liquid environment. So, I don't think that you could manage to kill the yeast by splitting cells in half (I don't have a nutrobullet or whatever is called), however, I noticed that a lot of CO2 was released during the process. This could be the reason, or maybe the friction of the blade with block of fresh yeast may have inhibited the yeast by raising its temperature. I'm just guessing here.
I'll make an starter and see what happens.
Cheers
M