advice wanted first time repitching

[wfr42]

Recovered about a litre of Us05 from my last batch while bottling yesterday.
Refrigerated over night and poured about the top 250ml from one half of the collected trub.

Gave it about 15g of sugar in about 100 ml of boiled water while I started mashing and I have this.

Do I pitch
- all of it (will the left over trub cause any issues?)
- just the top or
- (hopefully not) the back up yeast pack?

Boil is done at 1610 so answers before 5pm please.

[kev93_10]

Should have just pitched it without the sugar. Would have been fine.

In your situation I'd pitch the lot.

K

[wfr42]

Thanks, wanted to give it a helping hand but worried I've created a monster, going to start it with a blow off tube.

[kev93_10]

It's ok for a few days left chilled.

It'll be the quickest ferment you've ever had. Get ready to keg at the weekend!

K

[wfr42]

Cheers kev.

Looks like Sunday could be brew day!

[wfr42]

This fermentation appears to be going really well. Had a sneaky peak yesterday and since then the krausen has almost doubled (it covers about a gallon according to the bucket scale).
Is it worth top cropping for use in a black ipa in 2-3 months or is
- the top crop shelf life shorter?
- it asking too much of one set of yeasties to munch through potentially three 1.060 brews?

[kev93_10]

Top cropping is the best way to get clean and viable yeast.

That assumes your sanitisation is spot on.

You can harvest yeast indefinitely this way.

K


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[wfr42]

Cheers kev.

Thanks again for the quick reply.

[rpt]

While top cropped yeast is cleaner and more viable than bottom cropped, it isn't really best for storage. Top cropped is very active and is perfect for immediate pitching into more wort - for breweries that brew every day it is definitely the best way to reuse yeast. But if you take top cropped yeast and just stick it in the fridge, the yeast won't have prepared itself for storage. Bottom cropped yeast will have had time to build up its reserves and should store well.

[wfr42]

2nd half of the bottom cropped yeast has gone crazy!
I swear it only had the liquid layer on top of the yeast true this morning. Had been meaning to decant it some time soon.

[YeastWhisperer]

In the future, you only need to pitch between 80 and 120ml of thick slurry in a 19 to 23L batch. You want to get new cell growth every time that you re-pitch when serially repitching. I know that I have outlined my swirl and decant method of cropping the healthiest yeast from a batch while leaving behind the break and hop debris in a post on this site.