Harvesting yeast from a conical

Typically the yeast at the bottom of the fermenter are dead or damn near it. Drain that thick mass out until you get a nice creamy consistency as that will be the healthiest of the population. Once it thins out and you're starting to pull beer out with it you're good. Cool it down and let everything settle out completely and viola! Conicals are so nice, I've got my first batch in mine righ now, just harvested yeast last night actually!

Cheers

 

The middle is what you want. Bottom is the most flocculant, top is the least.

I dump the trub after a day or so out the bottom port. The racking arm on mine can pivot, and you can get a lot of the middle out with it. Might have to move it around when racking.

I have had success pulling from the bottom port too.

 

I imagine you could get away with it. The fear is that the yeast will mutate over time and some of it will become more or less floculant. If you are going to use it just one more time I would not be worried that it had mutated so much that it would cause a problem with flocculation in the second batch. However, if you are going to use it ten or fifteen more times and continued to take it from the top then I could see a problem.

 

I think you're confusing genetic mutation with selection among already existing traits. There's nothing about selecting more or less flocculant cells that is going to cause mutations at a higher than normal rate. It will simply change the average flocculation traits of the population as a whole.

 

The reason that there are the different traits to begin with is due to genetic mutations. I am saying that in the population in a smack pack or vial there is more likely than not some yeast with mutations, but that those mutations are most likely small and that there is not yet a sub-population of incredibly low floculators, if anything the yeast are most likely high floculaters because whoever packaged them was able to harvest them which probably means they floculated well. And that of the mutations in the population selecting some that floculated last will most likely not make a dramatic change to the new population after one pitching generation.

 

In theory?

Cleaner, yes. There will be less trub in the yeast from the racking port, which means happier yeast.
Healthier, yes. If you haven't taken already any yeast off before cropping from your racking port then the yeast you will get is most likely to be the stuff that doesn't quit before the party's over, but doesn't stick around after hours like a bad smell.
Simply less flocculent; definitely, eventually. Whether that's better or worse depends on how you like to run things in your brewery.

According to theory though, these things make a bigger difference the more you reuse the yeast.

Either way I'd harvest the yeast out of the racking port and dump the trubby poo off the bottom.