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You are here: Home --> Forum Home --> Brewing Forum --> Brewing Discussion --> Pitching onto the old yeast cake?

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AgedAardvark
SLC, UT
53 Posts


The schedules have lined up, and kegging day is the same day as brew day.  I'll be putting my Taddy Porter clone in the keg and brewing my Munich/Citra IPA today.  Seems dicey to put a relatively pale/amber colored, clean-flavored beer on top of the yeast that's been fermenting such a dark, brown-malty beer.  What do you all think?



Posted 34 days ago.

homebrewdad
Charter Member
Birmingham, AL
2480 Posts


I'm not a fan of this.  I say wash some slurry.  But really, the best way is to make a bigger starter than you need, save part of that for the next beer. Voila, clean yeast. 



Posted 34 days ago.

ingoogni
nl
314 Posts


Schlenkerla makes a light Rauchbier, they use no smoked malts for it, just the yeast of their bigger rauch beers.




Posted 34 days ago.
Edited 34 days ago by ingoogni

CXR1037
San Diego, CA
23 Posts


I like the slurry idea. 

For my last brew I wanted to re-use the yeast (WLP007) right away. After racking out all but a few cm of beer, I shook everything up and poured into a 12oz mason jar and let it sit. Later that day I cleaned out the fermenter and brewed the next batch. I decanted off some liquid from the mason jar then pitched it. Active fermentation in about 12 hours, and the gravity reading was on target, with no off flavors. 

I've pitched right onto yeast cakes with one gallon ciders and they just don't seem as good the second time around. 




Posted 34 days ago.

AgedAardvark
SLC, UT
53 Posts


Here's my feeling:  Pitching onto the yeast cake is gross to me, just purely from an position of intuition.  I would ordinarily put my wort into a freshly scrubbed and sanitized bucket, and instead I'm going to dump it on top of this gunk?  Doesn't feel right.



Posted 34 days ago.

chino_brews
Charter Member
Eden Prairie, MN
301 Posts


After one bad experience pitching onto a yeast cake that ruined an otherwise awesome comp beer, I have been checking a pitching rate calculator to get a sense of how many cells might be in the cake. Pitching equal gravity, it seems that a yeast cake contains about 4x as many yeast as you need. So maybe look at a calculator, and rack off part of the cake, as needed.




Posted 34 days ago.

ingoogni
nl
314 Posts


Indeed, about 4x as many as you need. Pitching on a slurry generally only works if you go up in gravity and darker in colour, Blond, Dubbel, Quadruple. Oxygenate well and use a some Zinc yeast.




Posted 34 days ago.

AgedAardvark
SLC, UT
53 Posts


You know what, I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing and pitch a fresh package of dry yeast.  I have the old dead computer, and a stir-plate setup is on my list.  For now, I'm just going to keep it simple, stupid.

I kegged what I had in the fermenter and dumped the slurry down the sink.




Posted 34 days ago.
Edited 34 days ago by AgedAardvark

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