General Category > Yeast and Fermentation

Top Cropping

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slarkin712:
The benefits are that the when top cropping you get all healthy and clean yeast.  If you want to harvest yeast, this is a better way than rinsing the "dirty" yeast at the bottom of a fermentor.  You get nearly no trub and no dead yeast cells.  As far as contamination, to me this is no more riskier than taking a hydrometer sample from a bucket.  I can open a bucket, crop some yeast with a sanitized spoon and put it into a sanitized mason jar, and then close the bucket lid in two minutes or less.  As an aside, I find it easier to use a Burton Union type system as a yeast catcher/harvester.

Pi:
Any way to harvest from a carboy?

gmac:
I did it and it's working now. I scooped most of the white foam and just pitched directly. I had other yeast ready but I wanted to use it for something else so this is working fine for now.

euge:

--- Quote from: gmac on May 16, 2012, 08:30:54 pm ---I did it and it's working now. I scooped most of the white foam and just pitched directly. I had other yeast ready but I wanted to use it for something else so this is working fine for now.

--- End quote ---

Works great doesn't it? You can take most of the krausen without fear. You won't disrupt the fermentation.

Joe Sr.:

--- Quote from: Pi on May 16, 2012, 03:04:43 pm ---Any way to harvest from a carboy?

--- End quote ---

As mentioned above, you can use a burton union.  I'm not sure how else you would top crop from a carboy.

One of the gadgets issues of Zymurgy in the past two or three years had a DIY union (I think designed by Tom Schmidlin, IIRC). 

Also, here's one from BYO: http://www.byo.com/stories/projects-and-equipment/article/indices/20-build-it-yourself/354-build-a-burton-union-system-projects

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