Beer Forum

So I brewed the CYBI Mission Street Pale Ale this past Sunday and planned to pitch top cropped yeast from it into the Union Jack recipe. This is what I harvested last night...almost nothing:


I did the CO2 push thing out of the carboys into an erlenmeyer procedure. There is a slight dusting of yeast after sitting in the fridge overnight. What a waste of time. I thought there would be a nice slurry. The krausen just turned to beer once it settled in the erlenmeyer (I later transferred it to the mason jar shown). A lot of braun hefe came out with the krausen though, so maybe not a complete waste of time. Is WLP002 not a good top cropper? I figured it would be since it's English.

Nate

I've heard people post about top cropping under CO2 pressure. Never done it but I get as much slurry as I need after an hour with natural CO2 pressure.

Now make a starter wort and pour the contents of the jar into it. It should ferment quickly after replication occurs. You'll have one of the best pitches you've ever had. Watch for lots of blow-off and a quick ferment. (Capture the blow-off into a sanitized vessel and put it back into the fermentor after the blowing off stops).

I think top cropping enough yeast for a pitch is taking too much yeast out of the ferment.

Tasty.

TastyMcD wrote:I think top cropping enough yeast for a pitch is taking too much yeast out of the ferment.

Tasty.

Do you think this is the case with all yeasts or just the classic English ones? I have seen some pretty mighty true top croppers that seem to really rage!

brewinhard wrote:

TastyMcD wrote:I think top cropping enough yeast for a pitch is taking too much yeast out of the ferment.

Tasty.

Do you think this is the case with all yeasts or just the classic English ones? I have seen some pretty mighty true top croppers that seem to really rage!

I'm basing this on a yeast lecture I heard (Chris White, I believe) that the yeast cells multiply until they feel they are sufficient in numbers to consume the available sugars (lag time). My concern with top cropping is that if you take too many of the cells out, especially the first ones to go to work, there may not be enough to complete fermentation. Same issue with excessive blow-off.

Tasty

Mike,
I actually over pitched the Mission Street enough so that when I harvested what I thought I'd get for the UJ, the Mission Street would still have the proper amount. I assumed 2 doublings during growth and pitched 1 million cells/mL/P. After harvesting the ~580 Billion cells I needed for the UJ (~150 mL slurry), there would still be the equivalent pitching rate of .75 million cells/mL/P in the Mission Street.
This is my first time top cropping and I gotta say there's really a negligable amount of yeast in the jar. A very small fraction of what comes in a vial. I removed 500mL of krausen turned into beer. It seems to me it would take a lot of propagation to get the right pitching rate for the 1.070 UJ. There's so little yeast in the jar, I can look up at the bottom and see beer, it's just a dusting. I want to try top cropping other yeasts now to see if it works any better.
Nate