How to top crop yeast from a carboy.

[hopshead]

I am thinking about doing this on my next few batches of beer. One question though. I use foam control in my better bottles. They are 6 gallon fermenters and I typically shoot for 5.5 gallons of beer in the fermenter, meaning I need foam control to prevent MASSIVE blowoff and lost beer. Will the foam control screw up the top cropping pseudo burton union method? Or, will I still get the top cropped yeast I need?

[Sam Scott]

I am thinking about doing this on my next few batches of beer. One question though. I use foam control in my better bottles. They are 6 gallon fermenters and I typically shoot for 5.5 gallons of beer in the fermenter, meaning I need foam control to prevent MASSIVE blowoff and lost beer. Will the foam control screw up the top cropping pseudo burton union method? Or, will I still get the top cropped yeast I need?

I think it will work fine. I've never used foam control before but let's take an extreme case and pretend it prevents ANY krausen from forming. You can still push the racking cane down into the actively fermenting beer and the pressure of the CO2 will force the beer up the racking cane and into your collection vessel. You can collect an ounce or two of beer and pitch it directly into a starter. Don't think this is technically "top cropping" but I'd imagine it would work just fine. The yeast wouldn't be as concentrated but it would still be healthy and active.

Regarding the starter: I'm not sure of yeast counts here. When compared to pitching the yeast solids from top-cropping, I'd guess that you'd have less yeast in the ounce or two of actively fermenting beer. The smaller amount of yeast would need to grow more. This shouldn't be a problem if your starter is continuously aerated (i.e. on a stirplate); the yeast will have plenty of oxygen to keep their cell walls in good shape while replicating. Also I'm pretty sure brewers that culture yeast step the volumes of their starters up by a factor of 5 to 10, so again, I think it would work fine. (1oz is about 30ml... So, at least the way I understand it... If the amount of yeast in 1oz (30ml) of beer were allowed to grow 10x in 3000ml, you'd reach the same cell density as in the original 1oz.)

Only way to find out is to give it a try!

[BDogD]

It depends.

First of all I'm a 10 gallon brewer. (That means I pull the first pint from one of two completely full 5 gallon kegs. No short knock-outs for me.)

If I'm harvesting using my 18 inch sanitized mash stir spoon (versus the blow-off method), I'll usually take one spoonful at high krausen and put that into a 2000ml 1.035-1.040 starter wort and let it ferment out. I would use that starter as-is for brews under 1.060 and step it up to 4000ml for bigger beers or lagers. If I need the starter sooner or go right to 4000ml, I'll take three or four spoonfuls or use the blow-off method (to collect a bunch).

So the short answer is the more you harvest the less time it takes the starter to ferment.

Again, I don't want to steal too much yeast from the current batch because it needs to ferment out. I'm top cropping for the quality of the yeast, not to save money or a trip to the LHBS.

Try it and let us know if you see a difference in the ferment.

Tasty

Thanks for the qualified "White" answer

So, one spoonful --> 2000 ml of 1.035-40 --> ferment out --> 10 gal of up to 1.060 wort.
Modify this for faster need, >1.060 ale or a lager (4000 ml either stepped or direct with more scoops).

I think I will try this (no good reason not to do it). I'm doing a Northern Brown with Wy 1028 London Ale this weekend. I'll collect at about day two to a 2000 ml starter that I'll pitch to an English IPA or FES. Should be fun. I do 5 gal batches - do you think this would be an overpitch?

Thanks Mike! You are a gentleman and a brewer. Perhaps a debutante...oh, that's JP.

[Thure]

I was thinking of top cropping the Ordinary Bitter i have in the fermentation bucket now and maybe fill the WLP vile it came from and put it in the fridge untill next the brew. Anyone tried that and know the lifespan of such a top cropped vile?

[TastyMcD]

At least two weeks. I've gone four but used it in a starter to "proof" it. I've never had a reason to go longer but I suspect that could be problematic without using the techniques employed by the yeast labs.

Tasty

[Thure]

OK, thanks Juicy McTasty. I You!

[Bah]

At least two weeks. I've gone four but used it in a starter to "proof" it. I've never had a reason to go longer but I suspect that could be problematic without using the techniques employed by the yeast labs.

Tasty

I might know a thing or two about this...
I'd say that if you put the yeast into a well cleaned Vial, with that vial sanitized very welll, maybe boiling and then iodine/star san or whatever method you'd consider the best you've got, then there wouldn't be any reason that you couldn't store that yeast in the fridge just as long as a fresh vial. Really the only difference would be that it would have been originally packaged under a laminar flow hood in a previously sterilized vial. So yeah...

I mean if you think about it what you've got in that re-sealed vial is a fresh grown yeast population and it would be fresher than anything your LHBS could get (at the fastest the LHBS would get the yeast after a week of QC testing and a few days of shipping).

I guess the only thing about that storage is that it may go from being this superman yeast version of itself, to the regular awesome but normal version it is. I mean either way though, In my experience that yeast stores for some time anyways, and starters are so important even with a fresh vial.

Hope that all means something,
Brad

[SacoDeToro]

At least two weeks. I've gone four but used it in a starter to "proof" it. I've never had a reason to go longer but I suspect that could be problematic without using the techniques employed by the yeast labs.

Tasty

I might know a thing or two about this...
I'd say that if you put the yeast into a well cleaned Vial, with that vial sanitized very welll, maybe boiling and then iodine/star san or whatever method you'd consider the best you've got, then there wouldn't be any reason that you couldn't store that yeast in the fridge just as long as a fresh vial. Really the only difference would be that it would have been originally packaged under a laminar flow hood in a previously sterilized vial. So yeah...

I mean if you think about it what you've got in that re-sealed vial is a fresh grown yeast population and it would be fresher than anything your LHBS could get (at the fastest the LHBS would get the yeast after a week of QC testing and a few days of shipping).

I guess the only thing about that storage is that it may go from being this superman yeast version of itself, to the regular awesome but normal version it is. I mean either way though, In my experience that yeast stores for some time anyways, and starters are so important even with a fresh vial.

Hope that all means something,
Brad

I'm fairly certain that White Labs packages their yeasts in a nutrient-rich medium. That would be absent if you simply put top-cropped yeast back into a vial. I'm not sure the viability would be the same as a new WL vial.