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Harvesting question ~ Saison/ Lager strains

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  • Harvesting question ~ Saison/ Lager strains

    Hi all.... I'm seeking some advice or insight into yeast harvesting practices regarding our lager & saison strains. We are a 7 bbl brewery with two 7 bbl conical fermentors and one 15 bbl. We've only been open for about a 7 months and are still trying to dial in our yeast management practices and select house strains.

    Our Saison strain is a blend of French/ Belgian farmhouse strains from Inland Island, a start up yeast company out of Denver and our lager strain is Bohemian Pilsner from WL. Neither Flocculate very well, med/low, so I pretty much transfer to a brite tank rotating the racking as much as possible before it turns to slurry and by then, the pressure from transferring usually causes everything to settle and I have harvest easily. What I'm concerned about is the yeast health in CO2 environments and, for our Saison, we are trying to dry hop it so can't wait to transfer.

    any insight? thanks!

    Chris Marchio
    Asst. Brewer
    Fiction Beer Co.

  • #2
    Correction, we use traditional czech lager strain from WL

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    • #3
      For the saison you could drop the temp down to 60 for a couple days and pull off yeast before you dry hop. Some say that 60 is a better dry hop temp anyway. I haven't seen much of a difference myself, but that little drop in temp will help some more yeast fall out and you can harvest it warm. Even if you seem to be pulling very thin yeast, you've still got something. So invest a few bucks in a microscope system so you can check your cell density in your harvested slurry. That way you don't have to rely on unreliable flocculation patterns. Cheers!


      Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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      • #4
        Originally posted by SeattleBrewer View Post
        For the saison you could drop the temp down to 60 for a couple days and pull off yeast before you dry hop. Some say that 60 is a better dry hop temp anyway. I haven't seen much of a difference myself, but that little drop in temp will help some more yeast fall out and you can harvest it warm. Even if you seem to be pulling very thin yeast, you've still got something. So invest a few bucks in a microscope system so you can check your cell density in your harvested slurry. That way you don't have to rely on unreliable flocculation patterns. Cheers!


        Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
        hey Seattle Brewer,

        Thanks for the response. I actually had dropped the temp to 50, nada... then 40, again, nada, then the magic number for 35 haha. Our tank had to adjust to dry hop which pushed us back a few days but we harvested nice medium/ thin slurry for our next saison. A microscope is on our to do list. Its a red saison dry hopped with citra and amarillo, .75 lbs per bbl, coming out very nicely!

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        • #5
          Gotcha, sounds like a total non-floc strain! In the time being, if you have an opaque yet thin slurry, that's probably between 1-2 billion cells per ml of slurry. You could ball-park it that way if you wanted. Cheers!


          Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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          • #6
            repitching blends

            Hi,
            I just wanted to note here that repitching blends can be risky, as each strain can reproduce at different rates, leaving you with a different ratio for your next pitch. Please feel free to contact me at cparnin@lallemand.com if you would like more info.
            Cheers,
            Caroline Parnin

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