blow off tube in jug filled with ioduphor? i have a beautiful looking cake in the jug, it seems active (little yeast missiles shooting up) solution is mixed at about 12.5 ppm, so buggies aren't really an issue. thoughts?

not sure I follow you but if you mean you have yeast in an iodaphor solution then that is no good. Iodaphor kills living things so those buggers are stressed at least.

thats kinda what i was thinkin, like i said a silly question. my next experiment will be a sanitized, water filled container for blow off/containment of the yeast and harvest from there.

I stopped putting my blow off hose in liquid, I just have it facing down. I have had no problems...
seems bacteria can't defy gravity... go figure

I use weak san-star in a jug for the tubes,, just too many cats around to have it in the air

ah, hadn't thought about that... mine is kept in a freezer

the blowoff tube won't allow anything inside during active fermentation and probably a day or two after that. So much CO2 moving through it and that's death for bugs. After that I guess it's a good idea to submerge it but I'm sure it's unlikely to cause a contamination then. Plus, you can just put an airlock in at that point since blowoff is no longer needed after active ferm.

I use Star San in my air locks. If a little gets in the beer, it won't hurt anything. That said, I wouldn't use the yeast that came up in the blow off tube. You'll have plenty in the bottom of the fermenter when it's finished.

actually, i really like the idea of collecting the yeast that comes out of the blowoff. i was just reading in brew like a monk that duvel does something similar to that. they have their conicals set up with large scale blowoff tubes so that they can collect the yeast, essentially topcropping from a closed fermentation vessel. i bet you could set up your blowoff into an sealed, empty sanitized mason jar with an airlock in the lid also. that way, the yeast would have somewhere to collect and the gasses would still have somewhere to go.

interesting thought...hmmm...

I agree that it's a good idea, but not when it gets shot into sanitizer.

Jeff, Thanks! I'm going to try that on my next brew

Is Duvel closed fermentation? Been awhile since I read that book. If you take the yeast from the bottom of the fermenter theoretically you're taking the flocculant yeast. But if you're not using the same batch over and over that's not really an issue, if it's even an issue. For Belgian beers, you'd want to take the least flocculant yeast because it finishes the beer drier when it's suspended and not buried in a yeast cake.

1.100 to jeff, that is a about the same the line of thinking, either sanitized water or a wort then make starters or a direct pitch

Ive never tried keeping a cat in the freezer. I bet they dont eat as much in there.

That's iguanas you're thinking of, Bill. Cats are mammals, and their metabolism is the same at cold temperatures.