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Hi Everyone,

What do you all think? I can't remember the last time I reused yeast directly from the fermenter without restarting it. I took this out of the bottom of 5 gallons of schwarzbier this morning, it wasn't really high in alcohol or hops, and is Wyeast 2206, first generation. I was planning on making 10 gallons of munich helles, do you think this is fine to pitch directly? I mixed it with boiled water to try to get it to separate, and it looks like it did a bit at least. Should I dump all of it, crud and all, or just try to get the top yeast layer?

Andrew

I would go ahead and brew the Helles, that top layer of yeast looks pretty good to go based on the light colour. Here's what I usually do:
Where the lighter layer of sediment starts in the picture above, mark it on the bottles. Tomorrow when you brew, shake them up again, and when the sediment accumulates to the mark, decant / pitch the liquid above the sediment into your wort, leaving behind as much of the sediment as possible. Helles is a light one, so leave behind what you can of the darker layer below, but don't sweat it if you add some since the pics above look pretty clean. You should have more than enough yeast for a 10g batch given that you only need about 330 ml of the slurry, and there is still quite a bit in suspension in this photo.

Thanks John. I didn't actually get to brewing though, but if I'm really lucky I might get to it this weekend.