theveganbrewer
Well-Known Member
Were you able to read my post about it? link in my sig. If you haven't gotten foam when you shake it you're going to have to increase the heat. Get it to 75 degrees or so shake the crap out of it and it'll wake up.
Heady Topper yeast harvest
- Thread starter sambr0n1
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk:
Were you able to read my post about it? link in my sig. If you haven't gotten foam when you shake it you're going to have to increase the heat. Get it to 75 degrees or so shake the crap out of it and it'll wake up.
ApothecaryBrewing
Well-Known Member
There has been a steady layer of foam on it since I started with some condensation forming on the walls of the flask I use. The foam doesn't look like krausen, it looks more like the head of a beer. It has been on a stir plate for 3 days by now.
I will give it a shake tonight but the stir plate should have kept everything in suspension.
Based off your blog post it appears I am rushing the process.
theveganbrewer
Well-Known Member
That first step can be a pain but it sounds like you're good to go on to the next step. Once you get up over 500ml it seems to go normally. I've had action after a day on some, some took 5+ days. I never gave up on any of them though, and eventually something happened, and all the yeast was fine in the end.
The most common solution has been increased temperature. I've had a lot of people contact me in your same position, on this first step, and I've told them all to get it over 70 degrees and everyone reported back that next day they had results.
At this stage, you may not see much activity, you're probably not going to see a typical krausen, you would be lucky to see a few spots of brown crud on the rim at this point. The foam alone shows there is CO2 in the solution, create by some yeast. Even at the 500ml stage, you might not see a normal krausen and will have to go off CO2 and increased yeast cake size.
You should have something similar to this:
ApothecaryBrewing
Well-Known Member
Yeah that looks like mine, minus the yeast layer on the bottom. It has been on a stir plate though so it may just be suspended. I will move it to a warmer spot tonight and see what happens.
ApothecaryBrewing
Well-Known Member
The taming of Conan. Just decanted this liquid and dumped a fresh 1500 mL on top of it to sit for another 5 days or so on the stir plate. So excited to use... what to brew?!
![Craft A Brew - Safale S-04 Dry Yeast - Fermentis - English Ale Dry Yeast - For English and American Ales and Hard Apple Ciders - Ingredients for Home Brewing - Beer Making Supplies - [1 Pack]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41fVGNh6JfL._SL500_.jpg)
Agreed fresh is key! Maybe I'm just spoiledthere's a reason that heady is #1 on BA. More people then just me agree!
I wouldn't put too much stock into the BA top beers list, which is clearly colored by the relative rarity of a given beer.
PtE was #1 for a while, then it was PtY...both beers difficult to get outside CA. Westy 12 held the spot for ages, and we all know how tough it is to get your hands on that. Now the flavor of the moment is Heady, another very good DIPA, but the best beer in the world? Hardly. No doubt it will be supplanted in the near future by the next white wale the beer geek can pound his chest about having all to himself.
MrNickVT
Well-Known Member
I was just trying to use as a reference. IMO PTE is overrated (through taste and multiple peoples opinions) and heady has just got something special about it. People constantly want it to harvest the yeast like this thread! Ill beat my chest for it.
MrNickVT
Well-Known Member
Abner is amazing man. SS#6 is my favorite so far with Abner second. I haven't tried them all so that could change lol
MrNickVT
Well-Known Member
Yeah I can't wait for their new bottle releases
ApothecaryBrewing
Well-Known Member
Just a quick update. I am getting ready to brew an India Red Ale tomorrow (mmmmmm) and have my Conan on a starter to get it pumped up.
Not even 2 hours after pitching the new starter wort on the cake, the thing had blown the top.
Not even 2 hours after pitching the new starter wort on the cake, the thing had blown the top.
user 156820
Member
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2013
- Messages
- 8
- Reaction score
- 0
theveganbrewer
Well-Known Member
I work with conan all the time check out this post I made about harvesting the yeast.
Steps To Harvest Conan Yeast from Heady Topper
All the volumes are in the post.
theveganbrewer said:
Good write up. I bookmarked it. I have a couple of questions after reading.
1. The last 3.5 liter step up. My flask is 2 liters. Can I take the 1 liter step, decant and just do 2 liters, then decant and do another 1.5? Or should I hit one of the calculators and just determine how many cells I will get from a 2L step?
2. If my friend and I are growing this to split, my plan is to can 4 pint jars of water. Then grow the heady as much as I can in the 2L flask. Then decant almost all of the starter beer off the flask. Finally, I would dump the 4 pints of sterile water into the flask and wash the yeast back into the pint jars.
I would split those with my friend and we would use them to grow starters later.
theveganbrewer
Well-Known Member
1. If you use foam blocker you've got about a 1.8 liter capacity in that flask. That will still work good. Just go 100-->400-->1.0-->1.8= ~320 billion.
2. What I would do is just decant enough so that you have enough wort and yeast slurry to fill 4 vials. I wouldn't bother with the water, just do it like White Labs. If they are pint jars, you could use about 1200-1600ml of wort/slurry to fill them up and each would have ~80 billion cells in there, a great size to start another starter from later on. You just need to make sure and swirl all the slurry into suspension so that each jar gets a fairly even distribution of cells.
Then when you go to the next stage, just enter the date you harvested and 80 billion cells in the calculator and you're set.
2 questions:
1) If I don't plan on using the yeast right away and I don't freeze yeast, should I try to do any rinsing or can it sit in the starter solution in the fridge for several months before use?
2) What types of beers would this be good in? Obviously DIPAs, but what about IPA's, black IPAs and pale ales? I'm assuming so, but just checking. Any other style it's used for?
1) If I don't plan on using the yeast right away and I don't freeze yeast, should I try to do any rinsing or can it sit in the starter solution in the fridge for several months before use?
2) What types of beers would this be good in? Obviously DIPAs, but what about IPA's, black IPAs and pale ales? I'm assuming so, but just checking. Any other style it's used for?
ApothecaryBrewing
Well-Known Member
1) I would do a small to medium starter once a month just to keep the fresh, healthy yeast cell count higher. The longer you wait, the smaller your initial starter should be so you don't stress them out. Maybe something like 500mL to 1L once a month... people can correct me if I am wrong but that is what I would do.
2) I currently have this going in an India Red Ale. I think this yeast could easily handle Ales from Pale Ale to Stout and maybe even help with some Barleywine. It throws off a lot of fruity aromas which is welcomed in some styles and experimental in others. I would say try it in whatever you want and see how it performs.
Made the starters today. Each got 150 ml of starter wort. Each got the last 100 ml of a Heady Topper. So we are assuming 150 ml of 1.035 starter wort and 100 ml of beer with yeast. I assumed 2 billion cells per starter.
Since I only have 1 stir plate, I am doing 1 with a stir plate and one with intermittent shaking. Each got about 20 seconds of O2 at the start.
They smell like heady, but that's likely because the liquid right now is about half beer and half wort. My planned steps are
150 ml, decant
400ml, decant
1L, decant
1L, decant
1.8L decant.
Using 2b as my start per can, I am assuming (accounting for some loss due to inefficiency) 300b or so from the intermittent shake batch and 500b or so from the stir plate batch.
The plan at the end of the 1.8 steps, is to decant both, wash with some sanitized water, combine the two and then split them into pint jars. I am figuring if I split into 4 pints at the end, we should be looking at 150-200 billion cells per pint.
Since I only have 1 stir plate, I am doing 1 with a stir plate and one with intermittent shaking. Each got about 20 seconds of O2 at the start.
They smell like heady, but that's likely because the liquid right now is about half beer and half wort. My planned steps are
150 ml, decant
400ml, decant
1L, decant
1L, decant
1.8L decant.
Using 2b as my start per can, I am assuming (accounting for some loss due to inefficiency) 300b or so from the intermittent shake batch and 500b or so from the stir plate batch.
The plan at the end of the 1.8 steps, is to decant both, wash with some sanitized water, combine the two and then split them into pint jars. I am figuring if I split into 4 pints at the end, we should be looking at 150-200 billion cells per pint.
This is about 20 hrs in (100ml of dregs poured into 150 ml of wort). Did this twice. One can for each start. Think this is ready to cold crash and step to 400 ml? There was no foam because I used foam control and used a little more than anticipated.
theveganbrewer
Well-Known Member
No, I don't think it's ready. Try the patience route and give it 48 hrs. The foam blocker will not affect the formation of CO2 head, which is what you're looking for.
I am thinking that I will pitch all of step 1 into my second step without decanting. My thought is that I don't want to potentially lose any cells to the decanted liquid. Does that sound reasonable? I would just put my ~200 ml step into a larger flask with 400 ml of aerated starter wort.
