New yeast harvesting experiment

So I'm just doing this for the hell of it to see what happens. I know there are lots of threads about krausen "skimming/harvesting" but I didn't see anything like this setup I put together (not saying it hasn't been done before cause basically every "idea" I think of has an existing thread about it). I have rigged up a setup that basically is a blow-off tube going into a large sealed mason jar that is filled with sterilized water for when I wash yeast. From there it has a second tube going from the same sterilized water container into a second mason jar with star San in it. So basically blow-off tube in and blow-off tube out of mason jar of sanitized water.

The idea is to see if I can "catch" the yeast from the krausen blow-off tube in the first jar of sterilized water and have the second jar there to catch the rest of the blow-off and keep infection from going back into the first yeast "catcher"

UPDATE:

Well heres a pic of what i collected from a batch of graff. It was made with a starter of WLP001 california ale yeast. As with most my other batches of graff there was a tremendous amount of krausen blow-off. Im gonna put it in the refrigerator to see how it settles. If it compacts down a lot I will post another picture. Sure is a lot of yeast. Thats a Quart mason jar that the yeast is in. Whats your thoughts?

 

Should work fine, I've seen a few posts about harvesting from blow off. I would pull the collection jar pretty quick though, if you get a hardy blow off, it shouldn't take long to collect a nice fat layer of yeast.

 

Just out of curiosity why pull the jar pretty quickly vs. letting it collect as much yeast as possible? Does it have to do with having more of a chance of infection the longer it sits? Thanks for the info

 

you may want to choose to discard the first bits of yeast and get the stuff from the tail end. less trub and a better balance of attenuation and flocculation.

 

You could just return the blow off to the fermentation vessel as they do here - http://www.byo.com/stories/projects...self/354-build-a-burton-union-system-projects

 

updated the original post with photo of results

 

In my experience, once it starts blowing off it likes to foam like hell and boil over out of the jar. Messy and unsanitary. I suppose you could replace the jar and collect more yeast, but I would definitely swap out once you get a good pile of junk in there.

 

????? I have a double mason jar setup. The first Jar is filled to the top with sterilized water (boiled jars and water as per instructions for washing yeast then cooled) for catching the yeast and then has a blow-off tube of its own that goes into the second mason jar. The first mason jar is airtight with a lid that has holes for the intake and out blowoff tubes. That way the yeast I'm catching in the first sterilized jar is gonna have less of a chance of infection and the extra foam will go out the blow-off tube on the first mason jar to be collected in the second mason jar to be thrown away.

looks like backwards brewery posted a link showing that this is basically a "Burton Union" type system. Thanks yrewerb I didnt know that was the name of this type setup

 

Nice work!

 

How did this yeast end up performing for you? I'm running a sort of similar setup right now and am just curious how the yeast compares to the original for attenuation/flocculation.