top cropping yeast

[robsan77]

How do you guys collect your top cropping yeasts. I'm thinking about using a plastic sieve then into a jug and into my conical.

 

[pittsy]

i don't but have thought about doing this , they say the 2nd generation is best also you shouldn't do it too much without getting a fresh strain .

 

[robsan77]

Just took a load off my US05 batch. It's been at 1010 for 3 days but the yeast head notoriously hangs around.

So I've whipped it off and got it working on a bit of dme in a demi John.

I've bottled and legged the beer and saved the slurry too.

It would be interesting.to do a side by side experiment fermenting 2 batches with either the top crop or the slurry to see if there is any difference.

 

[pittsy]

best to crop the yeast at around 2 to 3 days (when brew is going mad for it ) and the only difference will be if a) the yeast are healthy in 1 and not so in another or b) if the yeast off the beer has been stressed due to high alcohol etc

 

[kev]

The way I do it...........

1. After the initial mental ferment is over skim the **** off the top and throw away.
2. Wait 24hrs
3. Sterilise bottles, funnel, spoon, etc.
4. Skim top of wort/beer and drop into bottles.
5. Seal & chill

I got 6 vials of super-clean WLP001 from my last batch. Basically means liquid yeast costs about 50p a batch or whatever

K

 

[wilsoa1111]

i only bother doing this with my london ale III and keep it simple-clean ladle, wide jars and a squirt bottle of boiled cooled water. Does the job everytime and get 100% yeast is magic. can be a bit messy though-so bear that in mind

 

[kev]

What do you use the spray bottle for?

K

 

[Asalpaws]

I really fancy developing a "house" yeast strain. I have a pack of Wyeast British Ale II, I thought this might make a good general purpose yeast. I'm thinking of top cropping it, should I mix it with sterile water and then divide it so I get more batches from the first generation?

I note the post above saying it's not good to reuse multiple generations. T

 

[pittsy]

I really fancy developing a "house" yeast strain. I have a pack of Wyeast British Ale II, I thought this might make a good general purpose yeast. I'm thinking of top cropping it, should I mix it with sterile water and then divide it so I get more batches from the first generation?

I note the post above saying it's not good to reuse multiple generations. T

how i do it is 400g of dme and 4L of water boiled and cooled then fermented then mix well and split into 300/500ml bottles and use 1 bottle with 100g of dme as a starter fermented then pitch into yeast .
now when you only have 2 bottles left make a new 400g +4L etc and you get a new batch , you can repeat this process around 5 to 7 times before yeast may degrade etc so you can get somewhere like 50 ish brews but top cropping you will only get around 5 to 7 brews before yeast starts to degrade .
Doing it this way also helps retain the yeasts original profile etc while top cropping if you ruin a batch the yeast is lost , or the profile of the yeast can mutate (which may not be a bad thing but that would be trial and error to find out)

 

[Asalpaws]

Cool thanks for the advice, T

 

[Asalpaws]

Unfourtunatley I had started brewing before the above advice and had no DME to hand. I top cropped the bitter I had in my open ferment rig and collected enough pure yeast for two other batches. As I brew small infrequent batches, making one smack pack last 5 brews is good value IMO. Beer is currently in secondary, can't wait to taste it, my first open fermentation smelled amazing :)

 

[kev]

Do you lot top crop yeast when there's still foam on the wort?

K

 

[Asalpaws]

I cropped off the foam after 24 hrs and discarded that (as it's full of hop solids etc). In another 24 hours I cropped off the foam and that is what I saved. The beer still attenuated fine. T