How to top crop yeast from a carboy.

[Mills]

Nice video. It's rare that anyone talks about top cropping. My experience is that they are like super yeast and you don't really need to collect a whole pitch but a just a teaspoon of solids to make starter that will tear through a ferment. Great for stuck and high gravity fermentations.

Tasty

In the video I did not see the solids, do they settle?

[kace069]

Ok I am missing something here. Are you using that setup to be like a blow off system.
Or
Are you getting a siphon started some how and pulling of some yeast in a matter of minutes to pitch directly into another beer or a starter?

I already have a broken racking cane!


I bet this is a really stupid question.

[Mills]

Ok I am missing something here. Are you using that setup to be like a blow off system.
Or
Are you getting a siphon started some how and pulling of some yeast in a matter of minutes to pitch directly into another beer or a starter?

I already have a broken racking cane!


I bet this is a really stupid question.

Not a stupid question, as a blowoff tube.

[koders]

You can also hook up some low pressure CO2 to the main carboy to help suck it up even faster. This way you don't need to wait for the natural pressure to get high enough.

[Sam Scott]

Hey Mike, do you do something similar or do you pop the top off of the conical?

I have been known to take a sanitized spoon and lift the lid on the conical but usually I do it in a similar way. I use a blow off tube so I swap out the blowoff tube for a sanitized tube that goes to my sanitized erlenmeyer flask. The flask has a two hole stopper, one for yeast coming in and the other goes on to the blowoff reservoir.

Tasty

Hey Tasty! I just listened to the latest Sunday Show podcast with Chris & Mike where you described doing the same thing... And here I thought I was on to something. Oh well... I also asked Jamil about it. He had done it too but, like Jeff said above, he hooked up some CO2 to the 2nd hole on the carboy cap to increase the pressure in the carboy. Then he'd use the racking cane almost like a vacuum cleaner to suck up the krausen. I wish I had thought of that... I was sitting there waiting for the yeast to make its way to the flask thinking, "There's got to be a faster way."

[Sam Scott]

In the video I did not see the solids, do they settle?

When I started, nice creamy, yeasty foam was collecting in the flask. A little while later, I pushed the racking cane beneath the surface of the beer (on purpose). The pressure in the carboy pushed the beer up the cane and into the flask. That's why you see liquid in the flask at the end. (edit: After storing the flask in the fridge for a day... ) I pitched that flask into a 2 liter starter and it was rockin' a couple hours later.

And yes, this is basically just a controlled blow off.

[snooker]

i've been doing this for my last couple of brews - brewing on saturday, collecting yeast on tuesday after to pitch into the following brew on saturday, repeat. it's possibly the best yeast i've ever seen, even compared to a new vial/smack pack grown up in a starter.
i have also tried re-pitching from the slurry in the past.
does anyone know if top cropped yeast suffer form the same ailments as slurry yeast? what i'm thinking about is stress from high gravity beers and getting hop oils stuck to them so they can't divide.
my thought is no - they're not in the beer long enough to meet the higher levels of alcohol and are still dividing at that point so should be able to cope with the hop oils. also, if you wake them up in a bit of an oxygenated starter that must wash off the oils and let the cell calls recuperate.
as said earlier in this topic, no-one ever speaks about top cropping, like it's dirty or something. this should be more widely spread knowledge - i only started it cos of Tasty/Juicy talking about in on the session but now i'm completely converted.
only worries i have are - can this select for badly floculating yeast (again i think no), and i had another thought but it's gone now.

sorry for the essay, but i've been thinking about it for weeks now.

Cheers,
snooker

[hopshead]

snooker >> I am with you on this one. This thread and the last yeast show got me to thinking about top cropping. I actually jumped from this method of thought to the whole "burton union" thing. I know that I have read about burton unions being used to harvest yeast, but I can't seem to figure just how that yeast was harvested. Bn army >> was the burton union method of harvesting essentially the same thing we are talking about in this thread... a controlled blowoff? Also, with a burton union, the liquid is draining back into the fermenter, would this be considered constant repitching? has anyone made a homebrew with a burton union and if so how did it turn out. Snooker >> I would bet that after many generations of harvesting top cropping yeast you might get yeast that have different characters than what you started out with, including possibly yeast that flocs more/less than original.

Tasty >> it seems that you have skimmed yeast from the top before, so, how much should we collect for a brew? Do we need a starter, and will this top cropped yeast be ok stored for about 12 days or so till next brew day?