Hey, want to trade some beer. I have never had Heady and am in San Diego.
winvarin said:Subbed. A buddy from work and I are going to try a Conan harvest next weekend. We have 2 cans.
How much starter wort did you feed it the first time? I have my wort canned in pints and quarts. I would love to be able to make step one into a pint. If that's not too much
theveganbrewer said:I work with conan all the time check out this post I made about harvesting the yeast.
Steps To Harvest Conan Yeast from Heady Topper
All the volumes are in the post.
Good write up. I bookmarked it. I have a couple of questions after reading.
1. The last 3.5 liter step up. My flask is 2 liters. Can I take the 1 liter step, decant and just do 2 liters, then decant and do another 1.5? Or should I hit one of the calculators and just determine how many cells I will get from a 2L step?
2. If my friend and I are growing this to split, my plan is to can 4 pint jars of water. Then grow the heady as much as I can in the 2L flask. Then decant almost all of the starter beer off the flask. Finally, I would dump the 4 pints of sterile water into the flask and wash the yeast back into the pint jars.
I would split those with my friend and we would use them to grow starters later.
2 questions:
1) If I don't plan on using the yeast right away and I don't freeze yeast, should I try to do any rinsing or can it sit in the starter solution in the fridge for several months before use?
2) What types of beers would this be good in? Obviously DIPAs, but what about IPA's, black IPAs and pale ales? I'm assuming so, but just checking. Any other style it's used for?
I am thinking that I will pitch all of step 1 into my second step without decanting. My thought is that I don't want to potentially lose any cells to the decanted liquid. Does that sound reasonable? I would just put my ~200 ml step into a larger flask with 400 ml of aerated starter wort.
theveganbrewer said:I wouldn't decant unless it was physically necessary to get the next step of wort in.
Good idea. Conan can be notoriously unwilling to flocculate (but don't worry if it does), so you'll want to avoid decanting unless you have time to really drop the yeast hard before decanting. You want to save all the less flocculant cells that are left in suspension, you'll do so by not decanting.
If I drink 2 cans at once, am I better off combining both dregs into one and proceeding with stepping up or am I better off separating (I have 2 x 2L erlenmeyer flasks, 1 x 1L erlenmeyer and lots of smaller canning jars)?
Thanks!
theveganbrewer said:Separate and do 1 can per flask. Estimate 1-2 billion cells per can when running calculators.
Hey veganbrewer, how much yeast nutrient do you add to each step? The directions say 1 tsp per gallon, but I assume you added a higher concentration to the first step (1/8 tsp in 100 ml) just because 1/8 tsp was easy to measure out? I assume you aren't increasing linearly from there, right (1/2 tsp in 400 ml starter, 1.25 tsp in 1000 ml, etc)? So how much should I add to each step?
Sorry for the seemingly really dumb question, but I just want to make sure I'm thinking about this right. So you said not to decant unless you need to for your container size. So I assume I don't decrease the next step's starter size when adding the full volume of the previous step, correct? So for the first step, I would add the full 100 ml to the full 400 ml of the next step, right? Not decrease the second step to 300 because of the 100 I'm adding. I'm assuming not, just making sure.
When I bulked mine up, I stuck it in the freezer for 5 min to allow all yeast to settle before decanting. However, if you're using a stir plate, allow it to sit without stirring for a day, then put it in the freezer for 5 min before decanting. I usually decant because of off flavors that can stay in solution, so its always good to give the cells fresh media.
theveganbrewer said:I go with 48 because I work at home and can brew with no deadlines. If you're in a rush, 24-36 hours should be ok so long as you see that fermentation has occurred.
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