harvesting from primary or secondary

[loady]

I read that is better to harvest from the secondary. How correct is this ? I ferment fully in my primary and then transfer to the secondary when it's finished fermenting just to get it off the **** so I take less sediment when I keg about 24 hours after crash cooling it in the secondary. I can see there is sediment in the secondary but will there be plenty of viable yeast in there for rinsing purposes ? and would I just need less booked water to mix it with ?

 

[LeithR]

The norm is that the earlier in the process you can recover yeast, top recovery by skimming the Krausen provides the best viable yeast crop followed by the yeast cake at the bottom of the primary FV. So recovering yeast from the secondary is at the bottom of the list.

Having said that I'm sure that it will probably provide you with a viable yeast colony if you are planning to use it right away. I've always found that homebrewing is a suck it and see kind of hobby.

If it works for you then thats great!!

Go for it ad let us know how you get on. : :

 

[graysalchemy]

The problem with yeast from the secondry is that it hasn't floculated as well. What you end up with is a slight genetic drift ie you are actively selecting less floculant yeast.

As said the best yeast is top cropped off the krausan followed by that in the primary. This may have all the trub mixed but a bit of washing and it will be fine.

 

[loady]

thats good then...i harvested from primary..that s05 yeast is a completley different beast to the s04 i found..s04 so much nicer to rinse !

 

[daveb]

There are MANY schools of thought on harvesting yeast!....some have this weird idea that yeast somehow gets stressed out after fermenting a heavy strong alcohol brew so they suggest taking the yeast from the fresh Krausen or that they think this yeast is somehow more VIABLE???....I say that's simply mostly RUBBISH!....There are also issues with flocculation levels which may or may not be desirable depending on what you hope to achieve and what type of beer you are brewing...ales or lagers etc.

First off i will say this....if you are harvesting HIGH ALCOHOL TOLERANT yeast from say a new Barleywine or Imperial Stout etc...then i suggest that you do NOT take yeast from the Krausen EVERY TIME you take a harvest!...the reasons for this are quite easy to understand!...

Yeast strains are developed for certain characteristics...ie 'High alcohol' strains are cultivated specifically in a lab under increasing alcohol levels to ensure it builds up a RESISTANCE to alcohol!...just like surviving Bacteria can rapidly develop resistance against antibiotics when someone does not finish the full course because the few that are alive will rapidly mutate to adapt to the antibiotic... we now have many strains of bacteria that are unresponsive to many antibiotics that once would of easily killed them because of the bacteria's natural ability to EVOLVE (ie mutate!) and adapt to its surroundings..

The same is true of yeasts!....a low alcohol tolerant yeast will be either killed or stunned into inactivity if its particular alcohol tolerance level is exceeded...where a high alcohol strain which was cultivated in high alcohol conditions will not!

If you allow a ONCE high alcohol tolerant yeast strain to be harvested EVERY time from a fresh Krausen then it will only ever be subjected to low alcohol levels and will very soon LOOSE its high alcohol tolerance!

Yeast labs spend a lot of time BUILDING UP a yeasts alcohol tolerance, they dont just find a yeast that has the ability!..it has to be nurtured and subjected to higher and higher levels of alcohol ...such labs do NOT just take their fresh yeast harvest from each new Krausen!

Of course all our yeasts have particular desirable properties and its deciding what you want from each that should dictate how you harvest it...

You can of course harvest any yeast from a Krausen with great success so long as you dont use this technique over successive generations!

I always say secondary...you then know its done its job!....

As for people saying an old tired yeast cake from a previous strong brew will be too stressed out and it wont perform as well as could be in the next batch...i have never had that problem!...I have a yeast cake sat in my fridge which was originally harvested from a bottle of Chimay Blue and a Bottle of Duvell....it has so far fermented two Imperial IPA's and a Belgian ale..all around 9% Abv.....The original yeast was harvested from teh secondary (ie the BOTTLE) and i also harvested the subsequent yeast cakes from the secondary...

In fact i have just harvest a yeast from a bottle of O'Hanlons brewers special reserve (2010 vintage) at 12.9.% Abv and which was 3 years old!..I rang O'Hanlons and they assured me its the excact same yeast that brewed the whole batch of beer from start to finish and bottling!...

I harvested some of this yeast from ONE small 250ml bottle..i cultivated it using basic malt wort and yeast nutrient ...it took 2-3 days before i noticed any activity.......then it was bubbling like crazy!...i eventually transferred this yeast to a 1gal demijohn to continue the starter which i have used successfully in a Barley wine....this yeast had a LOT of life in it!..after all it had been through and at 3 years old!......so I dont understand people who say they dont like using an old tired yeast cake!

I always harvest yeast from the secondary yeast cake!...Never had an issue yet!.....

 

[graysalchemy]

Taking a yeast from a bottle is not the same as taking it from the yeast cake at the bottom of your secondary as usually fresh yeast would have been added at bottling, and in some cases this isn't even the primary strain of yeast, especially in a strong beer where the yeast is knackered.

Personally I don't want to use a yeast which has issues with flocculation as it takes longer to drop (and successive practice of removing from secondary only exacerbates this problem) and I prefer my yeast to stay compacted at the bottom of my bottles when I pour them.

 

[Yob]

Taking a yeast from a bottle is not the same as taking it from the yeast cake at the bottom of your secondary as usually fresh yeast would have been added at bottling, and in some cases this isn't even the primary strain of yeast, especially in a strong beer where the yeast is knackered.

Personally I don't want to use a yeast which has issues with flocculation as it takes longer to drop (and successive practice of removing from secondary only exacerbates this problem) and I prefer my yeast to stay compacted at the bottom of my bottles when I pour them.

what are bottles? :wha: :grin:

Completely agree, secondary isnt the place to harvest yeast... well unless it's a wit, I guess that it wouldnt matter as much in that instance.

 

[daveb]

Taking a yeast from a bottle is not the same as taking it from the yeast cake at the bottom of your secondary as usually fresh yeast would have been added at bottling, and in some cases this isn't even the primary strain of yeast, especially in a strong beer where the yeast is knackered.
.

Am afraid you are wrong..didn't you read ANY of my previous post?.....the yeast i harvested from the O'Hanlons bottle conditioned beer was THREE years old! and was the SAME yeast that was used to ferment it from start to finish!..I RANG THEM UP TO CLARIFY THAT VERY POINT and i made that POINT clear in my previous post in this very thread!

Give O'Hanlons a ring yourself if you dont believe me, it only takes two minutes, they are extremely polite and helpful..they used the exact same yeast as that was used to ferment their 12.9% Abv beer!...

As for pitching fresh yeast at bottling time, maybe even a different strain or even champaign yeast etc..yes am well aware some brewers may do that...BUT NOT ALL OF THEM!....many simply use the same strain they brewed the beer with...So DON'T always assume brewers will use fresh yeast or a different strain of yeast at bottling...MANY DO NOT!

Like i said there are people here that go on about weakened yeasts that have fermented big beers and they say that the same yeast is useless or fatigued etc....I say that is not always true!....i myself have RE-USED the same yeast cake that I have been brewing BIG beers with for two years now without ANY issues at all.

I have just bottled my Barley wine ...OG was 1.120 and the Final gravity was 1.015..i was going to prime the bottles with golden syrup for the secondary but i went with soft brown sugar instead....I use glass bottles but i also used a few plastic 500 ml bottles...then i can see how the CO2 levels and subsequent pressure is building up...and already there is an obvious pressure increase so i know the yeast is still fine even after 4 weeks fermenting and the beer is now at 14%+Abv...

Many home brewers i find will often follow old ideas and advice and regurgitate them on forums as if they have personal experience of it themselves....i prefer to use any previous brewers experience and comments as ROUGH GUIDELINES only....unless people TRY new ideas or experiment themselves then the whole brewing industry would not advance!....As for anyone who says using an old yeast cake can be counter productive..all i can say is, in my experience i personally have found that to be a load of old cobblers!

 

[daveb]

what are bottles? :wha: :grin:

Completely agree, secondary isnt the place to harvest yeast... well unless it's a wit, I guess that it wouldnt matter as much in that instance.

Bottles whilst a pain in the ass to wash/sterilise/fill etc etc..are great when you open one or take a few to a friends house ...they also more importantly enable BIG beers to be kept and stored for many YEARS! using live yeast and REAL ale!..(Like my recent 70 grolsch bottles full of 14%+Abv Barley wine!).... .Try em sometime and stop being so lazy! :whistle:

 

[graysalchemy]

Taking a yeast from a bottle is not the same as taking it from the yeast cake at the bottom of your secondary as usually fresh yeast would have been added at bottling, and in some cases this isn't even the primary strain of yeast, especially in a strong beer where the yeast is knackered.
.

Am afraid you are wrong..didn't you read ANY of my previous post?.....the yeast i harvested from the O'Hanlons bottle conditioned beer was THREE years old! and was the SAME yeast that was used to ferment it from start to finish!..I RANG THEM UP TO CLARIFY THAT VERY POINT and i made that POINT clear in my previous post in this very thread!

Give O'Hanlons a ring yourself if you dont believe me, it only takes two minutes, they are extremely polite and helpful..they used the exact same yeast as that was used to ferment their 12.9% Abv beer!...

As for pitching fresh yeast at bottling time, maybe even a different strain or even champaign yeast etc..yes am well aware some brewers may do that...BUT NOT ALL OF THEM!....many simply use the same strain they brewed the beer with...So DON'T always assume brewers will use fresh yeast or a different strain of yeast at bottling...MANY DO NOT!

Like i said there are people here that go on about weakened yeasts that have fermented big beers and they say that the same yeast is useless or fatigued etc....I say that is not always true!....i myself have RE-USED the same yeast cake that I have been brewing BIG beers with for two years now without ANY issues at all.

I have just bottled my Barley wine ...OG was 1.120 and the Final gravity was 1.015..i was going to prime the bottles with golden syrup for the secondary but i went with soft brown sugar instead....I use glass bottles but i also used a few plastic 500 ml bottles...then i can see how the CO2 levels and subsequent pressure is building up...and already there is an obvious pressure increase so i know the yeast is still fine even after 4 weeks fermenting and the beer is now at 14%+Abv...

Many home brewers i find will often follow old ideas and advice and regurgitate them on forums as if they have personal experience of it themselves....i prefer to use any previous brewers experience and comments as ROUGH GUIDELINES only....unless people TRY new ideas or experiment themselves then the whole brewing industry would not advance!....As for anyone who says using an old yeast cake can be counter productive..all i can say is, in my experience i personally have found that to be a load of old cobblers!

Have you quite finished?

You are entitled to your opinion and I am to mine. But I still stand by the points I made about yeast viability flocculation and genetic drift.

 

[evanvine]

I'm in full agreement with you daveb. :thumb:
There are too many "old wives tales" on the Forum, you make a refreshing presentation of the real situation!
The only disagreement I have is bottling, I don't like "fizzy" beer! :nono:
Be aware, some of the "old wives" have big red buttons! :whistle:

 

[Good Ed]

I would agree with grays, and certainly daveb, some of your views do not line up with those of Chris White and Jamil Zainashelf in their Yeast book. People have views and have old wives tales but I prefer to take advice from the experts in this field. The health of a yeast is very important and where you harvest the yeast from and the timing of such can affect it's flocculentcy (if there is such a word ).

It comes down to this, the whole subject of yeast is open to a lot of views and what people say works for them, but I prefer to go along with the advice from the experts and quoting from the above book "Can this practice make good beer? Absolutely. Will it make the best beer possible? Absolutely not."

 

[evanvine]

flocculentcy (if there is such a word).

My dictionary gives "flocculation" or "flocculence"!

 

[alanywiseman.]

There are MANY schools of thought on harvesting yeast!....some have this weird idea that yeast somehow gets stressed out after fermenting a heavy strong alcohol brew so they suggest taking the yeast from the fresh Krausen or that they think this yeast is somehow more VIABLE???....I say that's simply mostly RUBBISH!....There are also issues with flocculation levels which may or may not be desirable depending on what you hope to achieve and what type of beer you are brewing...ales or lagers etc.

First off i will say this....if you are harvesting HIGH ALCOHOL TOLERANT yeast from say a new Barleywine or Imperial Stout etc...then i suggest that you do NOT take yeast from the Krausen EVERY TIME you take a harvest!...the reasons for this are quite easy to understand!...

Yeast strains are developed for certain characteristics...ie 'High alcohol' strains are cultivated specifically in a lab under increasing alcohol levels to ensure it builds up a RESISTANCE to alcohol!...just like surviving Bacteria can rapidly develop resistance against antibiotics when someone does not finish the full course because the few that are alive will rapidly mutate to adapt to the antibiotic... we now have many strains of bacteria that are unresponsive to many antibiotics that once would of easily killed them because of the bacteria's natural ability to EVOLVE (ie mutate!) and adapt to its surroundings..

The same is true of yeasts!....a low alcohol tolerant yeast will be either killed or stunned into inactivity if its particular alcohol tolerance level is exceeded...where a high alcohol strain which was cultivated in high alcohol conditions will not!

If you allow a ONCE high alcohol tolerant yeast strain to be harvested EVERY time from a fresh Krausen then it will only ever be subjected to low alcohol levels and will very soon LOOSE its high alcohol tolerance!

Yeast labs spend a lot of time BUILDING UP a yeasts alcohol tolerance, they dont just find a yeast that has the ability!..it has to be nurtured and subjected to higher and higher levels of alcohol ...such labs do NOT just take their fresh yeast harvest from each new Krausen!

Of course all our yeasts have particular desirable properties and its deciding what you want from each that should dictate how you harvest it...

You can of course harvest any yeast from a Krausen with great success so long as you dont use this technique over successive generations!

I always say secondary...you then know its done its job!....

As for people saying an old tired yeast cake from a previous strong brew will be too stressed out and it wont perform as well as could be in the next batch...i have never had that problem!...I have a yeast cake sat in my fridge which was originally harvested from a bottle of Chimay Blue and a Bottle of Duvell....it has so far fermented two Imperial IPA's and a Belgian ale..all around 9% Abv.....The original yeast was harvested from teh secondary (ie the BOTTLE) and i also harvested the subsequent yeast cakes from the secondary...

In fact i have just harvest a yeast from a bottle of O'Hanlons brewers special reserve (2010 vintage) at 12.9.% Abv and which was 3 years old!..I rang O'Hanlons and they assured me its the excact same yeast that brewed the whole batch of beer from start to finish and bottling!...

I harvested some of this yeast from ONE small 250ml bottle..i cultivated it using basic malt wort and yeast nutrient ...it took 2-3 days before i noticed any activity.......then it was bubbling like crazy!...i eventually transferred this yeast to a 1gal demijohn to continue the starter which i have used successfully in a Barley wine....this yeast had a LOT of life in it!..after all it had been through and at 3 years old!......so I dont understand people who say they dont like using an old tired yeast cake!

I always harvest yeast from the secondary yeast cake!...Never had an issue yet!.....

My knowledge on yeast is currently very small but surly your yeast is fermenting at the upper limits of its alcohol tolerance levels. Then by your logic that same yeast will be mutating into a different yeast in order to cope with that environment so you will no longer have the same yeast.

Is this completely outside the realms of possibility? And hence the reason not to harvest from big beers?

 

[Yob]

what are bottles? :wha: :grin:

Completely agree, secondary isnt the place to harvest yeast... well unless it's a wit, I guess that it wouldnt matter as much in that instance.

Bottles whilst a pain in the ass to wash/sterilise/fill etc etc..are great when you open one or take a few to a friends house ...they also more importantly enable BIG beers to be kept and stored for many YEARS! using live yeast and REAL ale!..(Like my recent 70 grolsch bottles full of 14%+Abv Barley wine!).... .Try em sometime and stop being so lazy! :whistle:

er.. ok... simmer down mate, you seem to have a bit of a bee in your kaboose.. I bottled for a number of years 300+ 750ml bottles, a small army of Grolsch bottles so please to not be making assumptions.

I also have a little 9lt keg on a trolley I like to take to parties, very transportable..

question re your post... a keg is just a big bottle, why do you think that BIG beers cant be kept for the same amount of time a bottle can? :wha: I kegged a ~13% Barley wine last week... took me 20 minutes including cleaning the keg... save time in your life.. try it some time :grin: I also bottled 30 bottles today for a beer swap Im involved in and as a comparison, took me a few hours including cleanup... I know which I prefer to do :thumb:

:whistle:

 

[loady]

I also believe there are to many technicalities sometimes, albeit very good advice. ... the old adage, proof is in the pudding rings to mind and if it works for you then hey Ho. As for bottling, major pain in the ****.. that's coming from a 6 cornie keg owner...but... nothing like a bottle for prosperity which is why I still do it.

 

[daveb]

what are bottles? :wha: :grin:

Completely agree, secondary isnt the place to harvest yeast... well unless it's a wit, I guess that it wouldnt matter as much in that instance.

Bottles whilst a pain in the ass to wash/sterilise/fill etc etc..are great when you open one or take a few to a friends house ...they also more importantly enable BIG beers to be kept and stored for many YEARS! using live yeast and REAL ale!..(Like my recent 70 grolsch bottles full of 14%+Abv Barley wine!).... .Try em sometime and stop being so lazy! :whistle:

er.. ok... simmer down mate, you seem to have a bit of a bee in your kaboose.. I bottled for a number of years 300+ 750ml bottles, a small army of Grolsch bottles so please to not be making assumptions.

I also have a little 9lt keg on a trolley I like to take to parties, very transportable..

question re your post... a keg is just a big bottle, why do you think that BIG beers cant be kept for the same amount of time a bottle can? :wha: I kegged a ~13% Barley wine last week... took me 20 minutes including cleaning the keg... save time in your life.. try it some time :grin: I also bottled 30 bottles today for a beer swap Im involved in and as a comparison, took me a few hours including cleanup... I know which I prefer to do :thumb:

:whistle:

Am just responding to your useless post and comment ..what are bottles?....no doubt said in an immature unproductive manner as if to belittle or undermine!..who cares what your input is if its pointless and puerile.

As for beer maturation and size of practical container am surprised you even considered a keg to be similar to a bottle!......maybe you have VERY large arms and can easily transport a keg around to your friends or GIVE away kegs as free gifts to passing friends who haven't the time or desire to sit in your no doubt exciting company....Anyway i can easily give away a bottle or two of beer to one of my friends without such issues!...

As for Beer maturation....there wont be a lot of difference IF you used live yeast to condition your KEG ..PLUS you didn't keep taking samples and re-carbonating your keg to compensate for the lack of co2!...Of course ALL that carbonic acid fluctuations will play havoc with the stability and maturation of your kegged beer!..BUT Am sure you realised all of this before your innocent question...didn't you???

 

[evanvine]

You sound a tad miffed Dave, I take it you find Yob's flippancy a little hard to swallow.
I don't use bottles either, well very rarely.
KKs are what I use as I'm not a shiny person, nor do I like fizzy beer.
Each to his own, what?

 

[jonnymorris]

You sound a tad miffed Dave...

Akin to the pope being a tad religious?

 

[evanvine]

Akin to the pope being a tad religious?

You'll be telling me next he's a tad catholic!