How to top crop yeast from a carboy.

[Sam Scott]

2 carboy caps, 1 racking cane, an erlenmeyer flask, some tubing and sanitizer.
Piece of cake. Link to video below.

Top cropping yeast from a carboy video.

[BadRock]

Great video, thanks for posting it!

Wouldn't you want to thrown an airlock on your flask too? Just to keep any kind of contamination from falling into the open port. I guess you should always have positive pressure but I would think it would be worth the piece of mind to have it.

[Sam Scott]

Great video, thanks for posting it!

Wouldn't you want to thrown an airlock on your flask too? Just to keep any kind of contamination from falling into the open port. I guess you should always have positive pressure but I would think it would be worth the piece of mind to have it.

While collecting the yeast, I tried putting a loose piece of foil on the "out" hole (I think you see it at one point in the video) but it kept flying off. You could feel the co2 coming out. After I finished collecting yeast I put a stopper with an airlock on it. I used an S-type airlock because I knew when it cooled it would suck some air in (didn't want to suck in sanitizer). Note: After it cools you can't store it very long unless you purge the air it sucked in with co2 somehow (per Brew Strong Yeast Starters show).

[TastyMcD]

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

[nahthan]

Thanks for sharing this, not enough homebrewers try top cropping. Mike's right, it is definitely some of the healthiest most viable yeast to work with.

[BadRock]

I'm intrigued! Maybe next batch I'll plan ahead and give it a try. Thanks again.

[Mills]

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

[TastyMcD]

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