Top Cropping Yeast

[Hamish Jones]

Just been doing this on a few yeasts and wondering how many times could the yeast be top cropped and used again?

[jt]

I don't know, never considered top cropped would be different to bottom harvested in the number of generations.
Is it 6 ?

[jt]

Good read here http://www.wyeastlab.com/com-yeast-harvest.cfm

[Hamish Jones]

excellent thank you, I shall make a coffee and have a read, looks like just the info I am after, cheers

[Peter Smith]

so are they saying you can just scoop out some fermenting wort (say 36hrs into it) from the top of the fermenter and use that as the starter???

 

 

 

 

[Hamish Jones]

I have been scooping the krausen, you need to remove the brown junk first then wait a day to get clean krausen, then I just scoop a bit of wort with it into a nescafe 200g coffee jar then put pre sterlised cold water on the top to bring down the SG, then store in the fridge, come brew day take it out of fridge give it a swirl everytime I walk past and then pitch driectly into cooled wort, gets the brew going really quickly,

You can only do it wth top fermenting yeasts but works great and it is apperently cleaner that collecting from the bottom of the fermenter, I have stored one up to 3 months and just removed from fridge swirled it a few times and pitched and worked just as well as a fresh one, not sure how long it could be stored though.

its critical to sterlise the crap out of everything first and it should work fine

[Liam Callaghan]

From a very good source, their recommendation is 4-6 generations without microbiology, same as bottom cropping.

I really like top cropping and been doing a few beers with this, the Kolsh yeast can run a krausen that will blow the lid off my fermentor and starts the next beers in hours.  Stored for a few days befire the next batch is very fast results too.

I designed a top cropping fermentor for it, wide and shallow with a pouring flange for easy access and cleaning.  Bit of a specialised unit and not sure how many people would use em so I've not taken them any further as yet.  Will be great tank for me, so will make it anyway.