Beer Forum

I am considering brewing a bitter and a stout and want to try to use the blow-off from one fermenter to pitch yeast into the second beer. That is, pitch a healthy crop of yeast into one fermenter (that is reasonably full) and allow the krausen to push yeast through the blow-off tube and into the second fermenter.

I tried to search for this is the forums but I do not know what this technique is called.

Has anyone tried this and if so, do you have some advice?

Thanks!

That sounds sort of like a Burton Union system, but redirecting the blowoff into a new fermenter instead of back into the current fermenters.

There are probably easier ways to do that at the homebrew level.
You probably could just top crop off the current batch and pitch that.

@Bdawg. Hey thanks! Union Burton...I will look it up.

It seems like a risky go anyway...what if the kreusen doesn't go high enough and not enough yeast gets pitched into #2? Or too much yeast is pitched into #2...

CrashPedalDown wrote:@Bdawg. Hey thanks! Union Burton...I will look it up.

It seems like a risky go anyway...what if the kreusen doesn't go high enough and not enough yeast gets pitched into #2? Or too much yeast is pitched into #2...

I agree with your thoughts. Plus, you would be letting the one batch sit there without any yeast in it potentially for a while until the first batch kicked off enough fermentation and krausen to transfer into the other. You would be better off with Bdawg's suggestion of harvesting some of the yeast from the first fermentation and pitching that into the next one.

If you plan on going this route, buckets obviously are the easiest for this method. Using a sanitized metal spoon, try to skim off the first layer of foam (braun-hefe) which can be a bit darker in color. This contains some bitter components that you won't want to pitch into your next batch. Then scoop up some of the active krausen and add that to your aerated wort in your next batch.