Harvesting Yeast

[BourbonDrinker]

I have a 5 gallon batch of mead in my 6.5 gallon primary fermenter. The batch was started 10 days ago and the primary fermentation is going well (air lock bubbles once a second).

I want to try a 1 gallon batch of hard apple cider and figure I'll harvest yeast form the mead to use in the cider.

Here's my questions. How can I do this?

I usually brew extracts from WYeast packages and have no equipment specifically for cultivating yeast. I do have:

a thief (which doesn't reach the bottom of my carboy)
yeast nutrients
priming sugar

Thanks for your advice.

[Greenblood]

What yeast are you using? I have never reused wine/mead yeasts, but I know of no specific reason not to. I would just rack the mead off the yeast, and dump the cider right into the same carboy onto the yeast.

John

[BourbonDrinker]

This may be a dumb question... The mead is 10 days into a 30 day primary fermentation... Is there a way to harvest some yeast without raking the mead? Also, what considerations might be important since I'm only doing a gallon of cider, vs. the 5 gallons of mead in the primary?

Now to really prove my ignorance... Would it be possible to make a wort from water and priming sugar, cool, and add 4-6 oz. of the actively fermenting mead to get the yeast started?

[Greenblood]

I suppose if the yeast is in suspension, you could pull some of the mead off and use it to start a small culture, but I would probably just add the 6 or so ounces of mead to a quart of cider and then slowly add more cider over the course of a week or so depending on how well the ferment is going.

That said.....

Yeast is not that expensive. Dry yeast especially. I would just pitch a pack of yeast onto the cider. I would also go buy more cider I may even have some dry yeast that would work well. Let me know if you are interested.

[fergmeister]

Here is a thought. Every time I transfer beer I have to pay attention to not submerging my racking cane in the yeast cake at the bottom of the carboy. This is what I suggest. Sanitize your tubing and racking cane. Start a siphon with the sanitizer in the assembly. Let the sanitizer flow out and down the drain. As you begin to siphon out some mead for tasting of course have your yeast receiving vessel close then vacuum some yeast cake out and Viola. Next time you are at the Brew store grab a few packs of Safale 56 or Muntons, problem solved.
Chuck