So on 9/16 I made what I decided to call a BoneHead IPA after I realized I forgot to add 4lbs of sugar. Fermentation was underway on 9/17 when I realized my mistake. It was actually fermenting pretty vigorously due to the fact I used 5 11.5g packs of WLP-001 dry yeast. Definitely an over-pitch. I added my sugar and when I went back the next day to check on it, it was one of the most vigorous fermentations I’ve ever had. It basically reached terminal in 3 days. Fast forward to today…replaced blow-off tube with a PRV, poured off the liquid from the gallon water jug and noticed the yeast on the bottom of the jug. It looked like I had just opened a fresh liquid yeast pack! It was creamy tan w/o any foreign material in it, at least to my eye. I poured it into a shallow vessel to take a deeper look and like I said, pretty pristine looking.
I normally use a star san solution or iodophor solution for the blow-off BUT, if I were to use say distilled water and collected what amounts to krausen into the blow-off container during fermentation would that yeast be worthy of a re-pitch?
Good to know! So if it’s acceptable to use distilled water for the blow-off vessel is there anything that I might add to the distilled water to avoid spoilage? Like potassium metabisulfite?
Should yeast not be subjected to star-san? This is what I soak my Mason jar in before harvesting re-pitch. Seems like a better option that distilled but I’m new to all this.
This is brilliant. Thanks for the link. I tried making something similar with a canning jar lid once but it just cut up the grommet.
I think to collect top crop yeast with the setup you would just have to remove the short piece of silicone tube inside the first jar. The yeast should drop to the bottom and the co2 would exit into the second jar which acts as the airlock. I’m sure jaybird from NorCal would have some suggestions on how to best use it to collect yeast.