Which slurry is which?
There are three brinks of yeast in the cold room. One is your house ale strain, harvested from FV2 on Monday. One is the lager strain, a couple of generations along. The third is labelled in marker that has half rubbed off. The whiteboard says what was harvested, but it was updated before the last brew and not since. The brewer planning Thursday's brew is not sure how many times the house strain has been repitched.
Why yeast records slip
Yeast handling happens in quick steps across several days: harvest, store, count if you do counts, pitch. Each step is done by whoever is on. The whiteboard captures the current state, not the history, and gets wiped. Nobody links a batch to the generation of yeast that fermented it, which is exactly what you want to know when a beer behaves oddly.
- Brinks are labelled by hand, often faintly.
- Generation counts are kept on a whiteboard that gets wiped.
- Harvest dates and storage age are not tracked.
- Viability or cell counts, if taken, are not recorded against the slurry.
- Batches do not record which yeast generation fermented them.
What losing track costs
A tired yeast repitched once too often can mean a slow or stuck fermentation, off flavours and a batch you cannot sell as planned. Pitching the wrong strain is worse. When a batch does misbehave, you cannot compare it with others fermented by the same slurry, so the cause stays a guess. How many generations you use and when you repitch are brewing decisions for you; we just make the history visible.
A yeast log that follows each strain
- Each new pitch, from a supplier or your own propagation, starts a yeast lineage with strain, source and date.
- Each harvest creates a new slurry record: parent batch, generation number, date, vessel stored in.
- A printed label with a QR code goes on the brink, so scanning shows the slurry's full record.
- Cell counts or viability checks, if you do them, are entered against the slurry.
- Pitching a slurry into a brew links it to that batch, so every batch records its yeast generation.
- Alerts when a slurry reaches the generation limit or storage age you have set for that strain.
- A view per strain shows its lineage and the batches it fermented, with their fermentation readings next to them.
| Record | Whiteboard | Yeast log |
|---|---|---|
| Strain and source | Sometimes | Always |
| Generation | Current only, when updated | Full lineage |
| Harvest date and storage age | Rarely | Recorded, with alert |
| Viability checks | Notebook | Against the slurry |
| Batches fermented | Not linked | Linked |
Pitching with confidence
The brewer scans the brink and sees what it is, how old it is and how many times it has been used. Brew planning knows when a fresh pitch is due and can order one in time. A batch that ferments oddly can be compared with others from the same lineage. New brewers learn the yeast routine from the log rather than from asking.
The cold room gets tidier as a side effect. Slurries past their storage age are flagged for disposal instead of lingering at the back, and a brink with no scan record stands out as something to check before anyone pitches it.
Is this your cold room?
- Yeast generations are tracked on a whiteboard.
- Brink labels are hand written and fade.
- Storage age is not tracked.
- Batches do not record which slurry fermented them.
- Fresh pitches are ordered when someone remembers.