Ever use a 1 inch blowoff tube to ferment another brew?

I got a high gravity BSDA with WLP 530 that is going gangbusters at 64 degrees in the basement to boot!

I was thinking as I cleaned the floor around the 1 inch blowoff tube sitting in a 1L flask on a cardboard box that maybe I could have placed the blowoff tube in another brew as an open fermentation for science type reasons?

Whaddya think about a 3 gallons o' wort in a small cool ship where the blowoff tube is sticking into?

Very cool idea. Have never heard of somebody doing that, but I can imagine it working. It's almost like the first brew is breathing life into the second!! If you give it a shot, please post back about how it turned out.

Nice! I got a golden strong and a wheat dopplebock coming up so I'll try it out! The Weihenstephen yeast should do the trick . . . and actually the 3787 should as well.


I'll make up a wort for the 3787 with a similar belgian grain bill but keep it at no more than three gallons. In my basement I'm afraid some strange mold would take over so I'll keep it a closed system.

I'll use a weizenbock bill for the wheat dopplebock . . . this sounds like fun and is "green" as well! . . .at least as regards the yeast recycle process.

Stay tuned

The only thing that I'd be concerned about is stressed out yeast cells from the high gravity wort. A tough fermentation like that is tough on the yeast which is why most people harvest yeast from lower gravity beers. You could get some off flavors from the yeast but so long as it's a science experiment I say go for it.

How would the yeast be stressed out from within the first 12-24 hours even in a high gravity beer? If the yeasts' cell walls were strengthened through nutrients in a large starter and they experienced multiplicity I don't see how the yeast would be stressed but rather they'd be strong and viable, or else how would they attenuate the high gravity brew they are starting to work on?

They may not be stressed enough to be a problem, but I can see the increased osmotic pressure, from the high sugar concentrations, on their cell wells being a source of stress.

I like this concept. Please let us know how it turns out.

I am no expert, but isn't this a Burton Union. Using high krausen to put yeast into a second brew?

It would work, but is not ideal. Top cropping is not just repitching whatever is on top the beer at any given time. You really want to wait until more than 50% of the fermentation is complete before cropping the second krausen only.

Very interesting. I always thought at high krausen the cropping was to be performed but heck I'll try it out since only at the most violent ferm will I get the blowoff.

Now what kind of wort to make and what bugs if any to add after? Hard to estimate the amount of cells that will arrive into the tube, right?

My next pressure fermentation will be the primary keg connected to the blow off keg with the relief valve attached. Then I'll make something in the blow off keg.

wouldn't you be worried about oxygenating your beer. Or would it be still early enough not to matter.

BWN said:

wouldn't you be worried about oxygenating your beer. Or would it be still early enough not to matter.

Click to expand...

Sugar + Yeast = Alcohol + CO2

There really wouldn't be any excess O2 touching the second beer to oxygenate it.


Overall this is a novel idea and I'm interested to see the outcome.

In general though, it seems you'd have much better results just top cropping/pitching. With that approach you'd have a larger yeast culture growing faster, and less time for an infection to take hold vs. slowly "blowing off" small amounts of yeast into the brew.

I would top crop but this is a glass carboy that will have the tube so it's really a matter of convenience. I already formed two 1 gallon batches that will require minimal ingredients, basically 1.5 lbs pilsen dme, a little steeling grains, a 1/4 oz of earthy german hop pellets.

If I used a 3 gallon carboy I could pinch the corner of the top with a small tube next to the 1 inch blowoff to let co2 escape keeping the system somewhat closed. I'll have to change the recipe for that but I think a 1 gallon batch may be better suited.

DrinkNoH2O said:

Sugar + Yeast = Alcohol + CO2

There really wouldn't be any excess O2 touching the second beer to oxygenate it.


Overall this is a novel idea and I'm interested to see the outcome.

In general though, it seems you'd have much better results just top cropping/pitching. With that approach you'd have a larger yeast culture growing faster, and less time for an infection to take hold vs. slowly "blowing off" small amounts of yeast into the brew.

Click to expand...

I see I was thinking of the blowoff tube going into an open bucket or something like that.

It certainly could. I meant the inability to crop from the primary 6.5 ga glass carboy with a blow off tube. If there is significant blowoff I'd prefer to keep it a closed system for sani purposes. I don't trust the stuff flying around the air in my house.

DrinkNoH2O said:

Sugar + Yeast = Alcohol + CO2

There really wouldn't be any excess O2 touching the second beer to oxygenate it.

Overall this is a novel idea and I'm interested to see the outcome.

In general though, it seems you'd have much better results just top cropping/pitching. With that approach you'd have a larger yeast culture growing faster, and less time for an infection to take hold vs. slowly "blowing off" small amounts of yeast into the brew.

Click to expand...

Here's a perfect reason to get more beer and that's by decreasing headspace on purpose , but not by too much, say 5.5 ga to ensure volcanic activity.

I was wondering about this the other day as I dumped about 3/4 inch of nice creamy yeast out the container I place my blowoff tube into.

I picked up a 3 gallon carboy and WILL be brewing this experiment soon. I have to free up my 6 gallon carboy first. I'll come back with pics.

So because of kids and full-time work I didn't have the wherewithal to start another batch after this dopplebock but I'm gonna just rack the 3 gallon batch on top of this yeast blowoff which pretty much is a similar attempt at this experiment. The 3 gallon batch is a dopplebock as well.

Trust me this was a BIG starter! Probably three smack packs worth. Wyeast 3068 which is known to explode and 5.5 gallons of wort.

I can't tell from the pic, but do you have means for excess pressure to leave the carboy?

Yea, see the small 1/2" tube curled out of the top? That the relief. There is of course room around the small tube as well.

I'll post of pic of the action tomorrow night.

I saw somewhere a post with a fermenter and blow off going into a bottle with a air trap on it. The person was just collecting the blow off and then was going to wash it and save for another brew. This seems like a very logical idea to me. The Russian Imperial Stout I brewed a couple weeks ago blew off a bed of yeast that probably was the equivalent of a gallon of starter. Unfortunately it blew it into a half gallon of iodophor. Next time!

It's hard to lose your friends. . . All 600 billion of them

So after three days the krausen never rose through the tube. I think that the lack of a water closed environment for the end of the tube going into the air in the carboy, maybe pressure against the bucket space was reduced so that the yeast didn't rise up?

Anyways I'm just gonna top crop this one and try again for the golden strong with Wyeast 3787. I will reintroduce that previous yeast starter with another starter to ensure the yeast are very active.

Here is attempt number two. The krausen 8 hours later is rising to about 4 inches and I hope it blows off into the 5 gallon tripel. There is a sanitized 3.5 inch nail pinched against the side keeping the co2 venting.

I'll take a better picture when I get home tnite. Ipod pics are of horrendous quality.

So I can definitively say that this experiment does not payoff for these reasons:

1.) Cooking up two batches back to back with all the cleaning, sanitizing, well, you know, is way too exhausting
2.) I can't determine or foretell what batch of yeast will blowoff to such an extent that a proper yeast population will settle down in said piggyback batch. I even had 5.75 gallons in.
3.) The small batch is at risk by sitting too long waiting for this yeast blowoff and now it has to deal with 4-5 turkey basterful portions of top cropping (which is not truly a top crop since it is not after primary active fermentation)


Conclusion:

Top cropping is the bomb. This worked very well for my dopplebock I had tried this experiment on first and foremost. I'll now be forced to wait for more yeast after the first 2/3 of fermenting to crop some more from the golden strong. I don't know how the tripel will turn out now . . .(Yes, it does look to be a very dark tripel)

There is a basic brewing episode about using a blow off to start a second batch. However the guy pushed the tube through the stopper, all the way down to the wort. That way the pressure differential forces the yeast/krausen out of the tube even if there is still headspace in the carboy. That way you don't have to guess if it's going to blow off or not. There was also a video link of the process in action iirc.

I did push it down another 6-8 inches or so. I believe it did help. Thanks for the heads up. What a difference in color from the last picture though!