Conan Yeast Experiences

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Man, I need to get my hands on some of this yeast because it sounds like it's just what I've been searching for. I'll be in northwestern Massachusetts in June and I'm willing to drive a few hours if need be. Anyone know where the closest Heady Topper retailer would be?
 
This is the first yeast Ive harvested. I almost always use S-05 so I don't make starters a whole lot. I grew up a 2-liter starter for a single hop (Belma) IPA im making for a competition. Anyway the 1-liter starter was really good, definitely peachy but just so clean. I don't get the cloudiness, rather I find it drops out pretty well (again, compared w s-05). The 2-liter was fermented pretty warm and I can taste banana. I will repost with attenuation numbers when I bottle the IPA.
 
I'm having such weird experiences with this yeast. I did a 1.046 Blonde that only dropped to 1.017 after 8 days and an 1.061 IPA that is at 1.014. Both were mashed at 152 for an hour. The Blonde is all Pearl malt, though, and has a weird apple nose to it (cider-like - not green apple) and a moderate fruity flavor. It was fermented at 64.

Both are dropped completely clear after only 8 days.
 
PseudoChef said:
I'm having such weird experiences with this yeast. I did a 1.046 Blonde that only dropped to 1.017 after 8 days and an 1.061 IPA that is at 1.014. Both were mashed at 152 for an hour. The Blonde is all Pearl malt, though, and has a weird apple nose to it (cider-like - not green apple) and a moderate fruity flavor. It was fermented at 64.

Both are dropped completely clear after only 8 days.
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there was some discussion in the HT clone thread about this

later generations of Conan tend to attenuate less than other generations so it's possible the can you harvested from had a late generation in it
 
Derp said:
Thanks for the info. I'll be staying in Bennington but I guess I'll be making a trip to Burlington. There are worse parts of the country to drive through ...
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You're better off going to Montpelier. It's a shorter drive (not much, but a bit shorter), and you can always go to Three Penny Taproom to buy a can ($8..not cheap...but it's a bar) if the Hunger Mountain COOP doesn't have it. Also the brewery is only ~15 minutes from Montpelier.
 
Anyone tried conan on an imp stout or porter? I think I'm going to use it on an upcoming CDA or Black IPA.
 
Not to hijack, butis there anyone willing to sell or trade some harvested Conan? I know that veganbrewer was sending our vials on the hwady topper clone thread, but I was one back on the wait list. I am more than willing to pay it forward as well.
 
I did two yeasts from the same (IPA) mash, conan and London ale 1028. The ambient ferm temp was 62. The conan yeast wort was slightly stronger, 1064 and the London was 1055. The London came out better (the hop flavor was nicer), but the conan attenuated slightly better. The conan beer is WAY clearer.
 
Anyone tried conan on an imp stout or porter? I think I'm going to use it on an upcoming CDA or Black IPA.
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I think one of my favorite beers, More Brown Than Black, a stone/alchemist/ninkasi collaboration, was fermented with conan. BIPA is not my strongest suit, but I hope one day to try and recreate this one.
 
I am suprised that people in this thread are reporting high flocculation. I've brewed 4 beers with Conan since December and each one I would consider to have low floc, and one of them was very low.
 
954surfer said:
I think one of my favorite beers, More Brown Than Black, a stone/alchemist/ninkasi collaboration, was fermented with conan. BIPA is not my strongest suit, but I hope one day to try and recreate this one.
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I brewed the More Brown Than Black clone recipe from BYO with some harvested Conan. It turned out amazing - very fruity.
 
Coff said:
I am suprised that people in this thread are reporting high flocculation. I've brewed 4 beers with Conan since December and each one I would consider to have low floc, and one of them was very low.
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I agree, Conan has some of the lowest floc I've ever seen in a yeast. Stays suspended for a long time.
 
Coff said:
I am suprised that people in this thread are reporting high flocculation. I've brewed 4 beers with Conan since December and each one I would consider to have low floc, and one of them was very low.
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I agree. My DIPA has been in the keg for maybe 2 weeks? I pulled a pint last night and its finally clearing a but but it's far from crystal clear.
 
Will also add, the clove-ish belgian taste has faded out. It was there when it was very green, but once dry hopped and in the keg, when it cleared the flavor has gone, and it's pure peach/orange now.
 
I just had one finish fermentation that I tasted right out of the fermenter that had a very clove-ish belgian taste to it. The last batch I did had that taste as well, but it seems to disappear once you let it dry hop/keg condition. It sure is a strange yeast, but works well in IPAs.
 
nasty from no hops, and being from extract, it was extremely peachy. More of a warm sweet peach, where at the cooler temps, I find that more tart, semi sweet peach/apricot note.
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This seems like the right way to test yeast, do multiple batches at different temps

I brewed the More Brown Than Black clone recipe from BYO with some harvested Conan. It turned out amazing - very fruity
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Thank you very much, will Definitely be trying this sucker once I dial in the ferm temp.
 
FATC1TY said:
Will also add, the clove-ish belgian taste has faded out. It was there when it was very green, but once dry hopped and in the keg, when it cleared the flavor has gone, and it's pure peach/orange now.
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OK. Sanity check. I am currently in the process of building 2 starters from 2 separate cans of HT. My planned build up steps are 150ml>400ml>1L>1L>1.8L.

I got pure peach through step 1. But it could be because I poured ~100ml of dregs into 150ml of starter.

I stepped to 400ml last night. Today, when I smell the starter, I get a real light clove/pepper aroma that says Belgian to me. I will say that the upstairs room I have the starters in did get to around 77F ambient while I was at work yesterday. I've since turned the AC on in that part of the house to get the ambient under control.

I have gone over my sanitation regimen from each step and don't believe I missed a step that would have favored infection or wild yeast. I can detail my sanitation if it helps, but that's a lot of typing.

It sounds to me like I might have grown at a little warmer than optimum. I intend to wash the yeast with pressure canned distilled water when I am done as I have another beer on deck before I brew with the Conan and want to store my starter results as clean and cold as I can.

I guess what I am asking is, does the light pepper/clove I am getting sound like what some of you have seen? I am definitely willing to chalk it up to heat stress which I believe I can combat by decanting future steps and washing at the end.
 
Just pitched Conan into a no boil single decoction Berliner Weisse after 48 of warm Lacto ferm. Should be an interesting beer, It'll be on tap for club night at NHC.
 
winvarin said:
OK. Sanity check. I am currently in the process of building 2 starters from 2 separate cans of HT. My planned build up steps are 150ml>400ml>1L>1L>1.8L.
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why are you doing two 1 liter steps? you're not going to get a whole lot of growth out of the second one liter. might as well go straight to 1.8, no?
 
Here's my Conan experience. I had 2 cans of heady Topper brought back to VT for me. I knew I wanted to harvest the strain, but didn't know when I could get around to it. The beers sat in the back of one of my fridges for over a month. Eventually I made a starter using light DME and got it to around 1.040. I cooled down to 60 nvited a buddy over and carefully decanted the beer from the cans after leaving them sitting out for an hour. In the glass we did notice clumps of yeast colonies and the beer was slightly cloudy. I'm guessing that's the main reason they say drink it from the can: presentation. Anyway I pitched the dregs of both cans into about a half pint of starter in my 5000ml flask. There really wasn't enough liquid to keep the stir bar from throwing even on my lowest setting. So for the next 8 hours, every time I went to my kitchen counter, I'd shake the flask. The ambeint temp in my kitchen was high 50s to low 60s (because I'm a cheap ass and would rather spend my money or beer and brewing supplies then utilities.) So after 8 hours I pitched another half pint and was able to get the stir bar to stay in place. I pitched another pint every 6-8 hours. After 2 days of this I wasn't noticing any activity. I was going to give up and figured the yeast had just been dormant for 2 long. I considered dumping it, but left it alone. Around the 72 hour mark, I started noticing bubbles. Before brew day I had successfully built up to 4500 ml of a happily fermenting yeast. I pitched this yeast at 65 degrees into 20 gallons of a DIPA I brewed that was incredible heavy on whirlpool and dry hops. The fermentation was vigourous for 2 weeks and by the 3rd week it was still bubbling strongly. The fourth week I filtered and kegged. Some people say not to filter this strain to leave the phenolics and flavors. My preference was to filter, because presentation is important to myself and my beer snob friends.
I noticed this strain brought out an apricot flavor from the hops. It's really citrusy and juicy. I love the beer I brewed with it. I plan on keeping it going and am making another batch of refresher starter this weekend. I have already arranged a few trades on this board, but if anyone else is interested, send me a PM.
 
Coff said:
Just pitched Conan into a no boil single decoction Berliner Weisse after 48 of warm Lacto ferm. Should be an interesting beer, It'll be on tap for club night at NHC.
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Nice. After I get done with my kumqat BW I may have to do something like this.
 
max129 said:
I brewed the More Brown Than Black clone recipe from BYO with some harvested Conan. It turned out amazing - very fruity.
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Good to know. I really want my next beer to be a black IPA, but I really wanted to use my soon to be harvested conan yeast, but I figured the two wouldn't really work well together. I was thinking (and I still might do it) of brewing a 6 gallon batch and splitting it in half and using my normal 1056 in one and conan in the other just to see the differences.
 
mtnagel said:
Good to know. I really want my next beer to be a black IPA, but I really wanted to use my soon to be harvested conan yeast, but I figured the two wouldn't really work well together. I was thinking (and I still might do it) of brewing a 6 gallon batch and splitting it in half and using my normal 1056 in one and conan in the other just to see the differences.
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For what it's worth, Steele's IPA book has a BIPA recipe from the Alchemist that uses Conan yeast.
 
sweetcell said:
why are you doing two 1 liter steps? you're not going to get a whole lot of growth out of the second one liter. might as well go straight to 1.8, no?
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I was going by the numbers I got from yeastcalc.com. I started with an assumption of 2 billion cells from can dregs. Here's what I got from the steps. Maybe I am looking at it the wrong way (my assumptions were using the Jamil Stirplate setting)

1. 2 billion cells into 150ml gave a yield of 11 billion cells
2. 11 billion cells in 400 ml gave a yield of 45 billion
3. 45 billion cells in 1L gave 147 billion cells
4. Started in a new tab with 147 billion cells. 147b in 1 L almost doubled to 274
5. 274b in 1.8 L gave me a final count of 515 billion


If I take out the second 1 L step, I get this:
1. 2 billion cells into 150ml gave a yield of 11 billion cells
2. 11 billion cells in 400 ml gave a yield of 45 billion
3. 45 billion cells in 1L gave 147 billion cells
4. Started in a new tab with 147 billion cells. 147b in 1.8 L yields 359 billion.

Am I missing something? I would think the extra 1L step is worth the extra 150 billion cells. That's more than a standard White Labs vial worth of difference.
 
winvarin said:
I was going by the numbers I got from yeastcalc.com. I started with an assumption of 2 billion cells from can dregs. Here's what I got from the steps. Maybe I am looking at it the wrong way (my assumptions were using the Jamil Stirplate setting)

1. 2 billion cells into 150ml gave a yield of 11 billion cells
2. 11 billion cells in 400 ml gave a yield of 45 billion
3. 45 billion cells in 1L gave 147 billion cells
4. Started in a new tab with 147 billion cells. 147b in 1 L almost doubled to 274
5. 274b in 1.8 L gave me a final count of 515 billion


If I take out the second 1 L step, I get this:
1. 2 billion cells into 150ml gave a yield of 11 billion cells
2. 11 billion cells in 400 ml gave a yield of 45 billion
3. 45 billion cells in 1L gave 147 billion cells
4. Started in a new tab with 147 billion cells. 147b in 1.8 L yields 359 billion.

Am I missing something? I would think the extra 1L step is worth the extra 150 billion cells. That's more than a standard White Labs vial worth of difference.
Click to expand...

it's definitely worth doing. my question was why do 1, 1, 1.8 instead of 1, 1.8, 1.8 (or an even bigger last step if you can)? you would end up with even more yeast or possibly have enough to skip the last step.

i'm wondering if you 2 billion cell starting count is on the high side. i was just listening to a Q&A episode of Brew Strong last night, and Jamil was saying that even after primary floc-out and racking to secondary there are still 1 million cells per ml. if we assume that to be the upper limit, and a 16 oz can = 473 ml, then there is a max of 473 million cells in a can (with it likely being lower since some of those cells would have died off). but while most of them would have flocculated to the bottom, some are still in suspension and some would have been kicked up during the pour. so between this and cell death, IMO 300 million cells is a better estimate. i'm most interested in what other folks think.
 
They don't secondary, do they? Jamil's advice is not entirely applicable here. Heady is coming out of the primary basically unfiltered. I have poured Heady dregs into graduated lab vials. There is usually between 5-10ml of yeast and trub in each can. It's 1 billion cells per ml of yeast slurry, estimated 50% other materials. I don't see a lot of hop debris or non-yeast material in the vials, it's pretty much at least 5ml of actual yeast each time. So that is 2.5 billion-5 billion cells per can, depending on when it came off the canning line. There is more yeast at the end of the canning run. I've heard there is so much yeast and trub in the last cans that John doesn't sell them like normal and sets them aside for people who want to harvest the yeast.


Then I adjust 2.5-5 billion for age. 50% of other materials is higher than you'll find on any calculator, normally it's 25% max.
 
Vegan's numbers are what I used for the calculation. His yeast harvesting thread for Conan lists 1-3 billion per can as an approximation. For calculating purposes, I split the difference and went with 2 billion. In order to account for cell death, unhealthy cells or loss to decanting, I dropped my final numbers by 100-150 billion when determining what my final yield will be.
 
I think the most important thing to remember with yeast is that most of us don't have lab equipment. We have to rely on experience in many cases. I've been estimating 1-3 billion cells per can for 9 months now and have never had a fermentation fail because I under pitched. I think the numbers are close, at least they're not going to leave you short and with under attenuated beer in the end.
 
theveganbrewer said:
They don't secondary, do they? Jamil's advice is not entirely applicable here.
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no, but they do cold-crash. the point is still valid, as he was talking about what was going in to secondary (i.e. the clarified beer coming out of primary). so whether going into secondary or a can, i believe his estimate was still valid.

your point about there being 5-10 ml of slurry, and your conservative estimates, is a compelling one.

anyone here got a hemocytometer and a can of HT?
 
sweetcell said:
no, but they do cold-crash. the point is still valid, as he was talking about what was going in to secondary (i.e. the clarified beer coming out of primary). so whether going into secondary or a can, i believe his estimate was still valid.

your point about there being 5-10 ml of slurry, and your conservative estimates, is a compelling one.

anyone here got a hemocytometer and a can of HT?
Click to expand...

It would be nice if we could get a scientific measurement from the can. I think there are a few lurkers here with that capability. maybe al from ECY knows.
 
winvarin said:
OK. Sanity check. I am currently in the process of building 2 starters from 2 separate cans of HT. My planned build up steps are 150ml>400ml>1L>1L>1.8L.

I got pure peach through step 1. But it could be because I poured ~100ml of dregs into 150ml of starter.

I stepped to 400ml last night. Today, when I smell the starter, I get a real light clove/pepper aroma that says Belgian to me. I will say that the upstairs room I have the starters in did get to around 77F ambient while I was at work yesterday. I've since turned the AC on in that part of the house to get the ambient under control.

I have gone over my sanitation regimen from each step and don't believe I missed a step that would have favored infection or wild yeast. I can detail my sanitation if it helps, but that's a lot of typing.

It sounds to me like I might have grown at a little warmer than optimum. I intend to wash the yeast with pressure canned distilled water when I am done as I have another beer on deck before I brew with the Conan and want to store my starter results as clean and cold as I can.

I guess what I am asking is, does the light pepper/clove I am getting sound like what some of you have seen? I am definitely willing to chalk it up to heat stress which I believe I can combat by decanting future steps and washing at the end.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I got. Don't worry.

My first step was all peachy and apricot, with a slight, slighty, clove like belgian note.

My final step up of flowed my flask even for the night.

I pulled a vial from my first step, and split my second one into two batches and used them in a Citra DIPA, and a Blonde. The Blonde never tossed the clove, as I cut it with a little US 05 to see what I got on a cheap recipe( which was awesome by the way.. )

The DIPA took me about a week or 2 before the belgian note passed. If you drank it green, it was a damn good beer, but you'd swear it was some cross breed Belgian DIPA...

After I dry hopped in the keg and it sat, it's gone away. I still think I taste it sometimes but apparently I'm the only one!
 
That makes me feel better. I plan to keep growing this as long as the aroma stays in this ballpark then.

For those of you subbed to both threads, this is a repost of something I just submitted on a Conan harvest thread ...


Unbelievable. Bumped up to my 1L step about 3 hrs ago. I just went up to check the one on the stir plate, and swirl the one that isn't. Stir plate had just the faint beginning of a krausen. The other one put off some foam when I swirled it.

The clove is still there, although reduced because of the added starter wort. But I can swear that I smell some peach trying to creep back in.

What kind of sorcery have I unleashed?
 

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