Fermenting in conical

[ibemopar]

So, i just bottled my first batch of an amber ale out of my new conical fermenter. Everything went well throughout the whole process.. I love the ease of sample readings.. The tastings that I had were pretty decent, except when I went to bottle. It had a melon/banana taste to it that was never present before. I looked at some of the common off flavors, and it appears ESTER is the cause of my issue? Im wondering if anyone has experienced this and the best way to rid the bananas.. Also, i have questions of harvesting yeast from a conical. Not sure if this is the area? But whats the best way to do so? I just opened the bottom port and dumped out the gunk, until beer came through.

[ziggy]

What yeast strain were you using? Underpitching and high fermentation temperatures usually lead to esters and it depends on the yeast strain.

As far as harvesting yeast from a conical you don't want the yeast that flocs early or late, you want the stuff right in the middle. So you probably want to let it go for 2-3 days, dump that off, let it go another 2 days and collect that.

[ibemopar]

That make sense.. It's probably an underpitching thing.. Ive never done a starter, that could be why ive always had those small off flavors. I'm confident it's not contamination now.. I'll have to read up more on making yeast starters.. I was collecting the yeast from this batch in hopes of re-using but I pretty much collected all of it.. After bubbling stopped I collected 3 days in a row.. Is it still good? Or are the off flavors gonna be present in the new batch?

[ziggy]

The yeast itself should be good and now that you have a slurry of it you should be able to pitch at the proper rate without much difficulty. Go to www.mrmalty.com and use the yeast pitching rate calculator. It has an option for pitching from slurry. It shouldn't be a problem that you collected all the yeast. That's what I do when I use buckets. If you have the luxury of a conical it gives you the option of taking that middle yeast.