I have a witbier in the primary, pitched with Wyeast 3944. After day two I had pretty good blow-off for a 1.050 beer. After about four days I replaced the blow-off tube and poured the nasty water from the airlock jar. At the bottom of the jar was what looked like yeast. A pretty decent slurry of yeast-looking solids glared back at me. So I re-pitched the slurry into a mini starter wort, dash of nutrient, and squirt of O2 and it developed a krausen head in less than two hours. Krausen stayed for about 12 hours then fell, volume of slurry easily doubled (eyeball only). Aroma was pleasant, but I never got the off-gassing present in all my other starters (no tall foam when shaken). Most important, nothing that the yeast contacted had been sanitized. The airlock jar was washed only and the tubing was cheap vinyl, sanitized at the primary end only. But other than the lack of CO2 off-gassing the slurry behaved pretty normal. Jamil says that the pedigree of top yeast is superior to bottom yeast but that few brewers collect it from the top anymore. Anyone have experience with this? I'm keeping the slurry . . . any opinions on what to expect?
I wouldn't use the blow off for anything. I fill my blow off jar with star san, and would expect that much star san to be bad for yeast. I would expect that if you just had yeast blow off into a sanitized jar that you're begging for an infection. Top cropping generally refers to skimming off your high krausen, (the bubbles on top of your fermenter when it's most active) and either pitching or making a starter from that.
Jamil and Chris White did mention that you can have a direct transfer from one fermenter to the next, sort of like an open thermowell. I don't recall if they transferred into any type of liquid or not.
Certainly , it is hard to answer your question.You said you didn´t sanitize some objects that were in contact with that yeast, think is a matter of good or bad luck if you pick some bad bugs up along the way.Let that starter sit 2-3 days to figure if it develops some weird stuff
I'll answer a question with another question: What are you going to do with the yeast cake of this beer? If you're just playing around to say "I top cropped" then I'd discard this blow off yeast--Especially if you don't know that you were sanitary about it. The yeast cake has about 2-3 batches of beer worth if you need it. It's great stuff too. You'll also know it's as sanitary as your current batch of beer.
I wasn't really intending to top crop . . . but when I saw the blow off I decided to experiment. Re-starting the yeast seemed to go normally and it looks like any other mini-starter. If infected I would expect it to not re-start or look/smell awful. I will probably leave at room temperature for another day then chill and store. My normal routine is to wash the yeast cake and store the yeast and will do that as soon as primary is finished. But from what I've read, 3944 is ideal to top crop. The top yeast should be superior to the bottom yeast cake (high vitality/viability and free from trub). Obviously getting the top yeast through an un-sanitized tube is not the way to go. Not even sure if popping the primary lid and "skimming" the krausen is worth the risk. There is a pretty cool video of top-cropping the krausen from a carboy with CO2 and a two hole stopper. Unless someone has more insight, I'll probably not have the nerve to use the top-cropped yeast . . . if nothing else it was a good review of different harvest techniques.
If you had sanitized the blowoff tube, jar and water in the jar I think that yeast would be fine. But you did not, so there is probably other organisms in your slurry even it they are not evident right now.
Your logic makes sense . . . can't really risk a new brew on who-knows-what. But now that I've seen this will be ready the next time I brew a wit or hefe . . . will have all sanitized tube/airlock in place and see how it goes.
I'd recommend sending the blow-off tube into another closed container, like a mason jar. My set-up uses an old Costco-sized mayo jar. Then put an airlock on the mayo jar to vent. Need to get gaskets & drill holes in the lid of the container. Sanitize the blow-off tube & jar and you've got yourself something like a burton union system for yeast collection. I've actually gotten kinda lazy and now just use buckets and skim the krausen, but that was how I top-cropped for a few years before I used buckets. Here was a project for an actual burton union system: http://byo.com/wheat-beer/item/351-build-a-burton-union-system-projects I modeled mine from Randy Mosher's set-up. Here was an image I found for it from Radical Brewing: http://www.blackmanbrew.com/2011/12/closed-blow-off-fermentation.html
Thanks for the great links. I pride myself on finding things like this through Google, but these are new to me. I like messing around with new gadgets and this looks like the perfect project.
