Calling All Yeast Experts

[Tony M]

My wife found a bottle of Pro26 yeast that had been sleeping in the kitchen fridge since July 2010. I fed it and it wakes after a couple of days and produces a nice clean starter so I brewed a Munich style lager with it which has now been in cold conditioning for a week after the ferment finished at 1012, which was spot on. So far so good. Yesterday, I dumped a litre out of the fermenter (conical) to harvest the yeast and found there was very little of the nice clean lightly coloured yeast in the sample. I had a peek into the fermenter and there is still a dense ,thick and creamy layer on the top of the brew; something I've not seen before. This is the first time I have used this particular yeast and I wan't to know -
1. Is this normal
2.Is it in fact yeast sitting there
3. If it is, is it the nature of the beast to float there indefinitely.

 

[Gavo]

Some yeasts will just sit an the top and refuse to drop.
If you want to harvest the yeast then you can top crop, it will be the best yeast you can get out of a batch - nice and clean with little washing to do. To harvets the yeast just sanitise a large spoon and bottle and scoop the yeast up with the spoon and drop it in the bottle, you can then top the bottle up with cooled boiled water. This is my preffered method of harvesting yeast.
The yeast will drop with a crash chill with no problem.

Cheers.

 

[OneEye]

I'm not familiar with this Pro26 yeast. Is it a true lager yeast? i.e. is it bottom fermenting?

 

[Thefatdoghead]

Could you just keep poring off the trub until you get to the cream and then collect? :icon_offtopic: Probably a thread on here but just interested to know how you control the temp in your conical?

 

[OneEye]

I don't claim to be an expert but I know from washing my yeast that it stratifies into three layers. Beer on top, crap at the bottom and yeasties in the middle. So maybe keep purring off the crap with the hop residue and whatnot until you hit the creamier stuff

 

[Tony M]

Could you just keep poring off the trub until you get to the cream and then collect? :icon_offtopic: Probably a thread on here but just interested to know how you control the temp in your conical?

There is a photo in this thread

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...rmenting+fridge