Harvesting Yeast from a Conical

[Conehead]

I want to re-use my yeast from my Conical. Should I remove the yeast before kegging my finished beer or after?

Conehead

 

[RiverCityBrewer]

I dump the yeast before racking the beer off, you will need the pressure of the beer to push the yeast out.

 

[Conehead]

Okay. I think that is best, even though I use CO2 to keg my beer from my fermenter.

Thanks for the reply,

Conehead

 

[jawsbc]

Pull the yeast off the bottom of your fermenter before it gets too old. When fermentation slows, drain off the excess yeast from the bottom of your conical. The first time, you are getting mostly dead yeast and trub, so throw that away. On the 2nd or 3rd time, when the beer is at or near completion of fermentation, you can pull it off and save it.

 

[wreals]

Pull the yeast off the bottom of your fermenter before it gets too old. When fermentation slows, drain off the excess yeast from the bottom of your conical. The first time, you are getting mostly dead yeast and trub, so throw that away. On the 2nd or 3rd time, when the beer is at or near completion of fermentation, you can pull it off and save it.

Is there an easy way to tell the difference between the trub and the yeast.

 

[RiverCityBrewer]

Most of the trub will come out in the first dump and will be much lighter in color than the yeast. On the second dump you should get a good plug of pure yeast and it will be a light tan color. You will get some yeast when you dump the trub, but I usually throw that first one away and do a 2nd and sometimes a 3rd dump to get all the pure yeast.