I havent been able to find a picture of what I am using when top cropping yeast but it looks like this , though it has as a longer handle and is only concave, not cupped as in the picture but the hole pattern is right on.
I usually end up with a full container of foam that ends up being a very small layer on the bottom of the jar after sitting in the fridge.
Obviously I’m not expecting to pull slurry off the krausen.
I have a beer fermenting and looking at it, I decided to try and do little top croppping.
The beer is in a better bottle, at the store I found a little ladle with slots in the bottom that
will fit in BB. It’s made for scooping olives out of a jar.
I read somewhere that a White Labs vial contains 35 ml yeast. Which is 7 (edit) “teaspoons”
so that’s what I am going to try and scoop out. I am not pitching it directly into another batch.
I am trying to decide if should boil an old White Labs vial and put the yeast in that, topped
off with boiled cooled water, just put it in a ziploc bag, or put in the ziploc and and some boiled
cooled water. Any one have any thoughts in regard to which would be easiest?
Do you think boiling a vial and cap is a bad idea?
Quick note - 35 ml is seven teaspoons, or 2-1/3 tablespoons.
This looks like what I use to scoop yeast, although mine is better finished than this looks to be. It’s a US-made Ecko, which means it’s old. Everything seems to be made in China nowadays.
重庆大龙网科技集团有限公司 (I’ve tried to insert the image but without luck.)
My favorite ale yeast is WhiteLabs WLP022 Essex, which is a great top cropper. I have a paternal fondness for this since I brought it back from England (Ridley’s Brewery in Essex, now closed) and provided it to White Labs, but I’d like it anyway.
I generally harvest the yeast three or four days after pitching, when fermentation has slowed and the yeast head has collapsed into a thick layer about 1/2 inch thick. I scoop the yeast with the ladle and drain it, then drop it into a one quart wide-mouth mason jar that I’ve sanitized by boiling. I get more than enough to fill the jar from a ten gallon batch. I put a sanitized lid loosely on the jar and put it in the fridge with a saucer since it often overflows, and when it settles down, I generally nave more than half a jar of thick yeast (the consistence of soft-serve ice cream) with beer on top.
I can keep this for some weeks, but if it’s been more than three weeks or so, I generally make a starter. I find that using one tablespoon (15 ml) of this thick yeast per gallon of normal strength wort works well, double that for strong wort (>1.060).
Since this yeast is only available seasonally, I keep it going a year or more this way, although now that one of our local brewpubs (Grizzly Peak) has adopted this as its house yeast, I don’t have to worry about this.
Sometimes I pour off the beer and stir in cooled, boiled distilled or R.O. water. This is supposed to keep yeast better than beer.
I should mention that this is my procedure when I keg. The fermentation at this point is just ticking over, and if I do everything right, it finishes up in the keg and produces the proper carbonation.
I open-ferment in a cut-off old-style half barrel. Sometimes I put a lid on it; sometimes I don’t. I have a picture of an out-of-control fermentation of a RIS in this barrel at http://aabg.org/2007/06/05/the-yeast-that-ate-ann-arbor/
If I’m bottling, then I might let it go a little longer before racking to a carboy, where I’ll let it settle out and/or dry hop before bottling.