Reusing yeast cake

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Permalink Reply by jt on January 2, 2011 at 12:24pm

And this is how the yeast shaped up with a bit of wort

Permalink Reply by Michael on September 16, 2011 at 10:46am

I have done this three or four times now, and no problems!

I do not know many many generations can go before it is I'll advised though. Maybe someone can answer this.

Permalink Reply by denimglen on August 17, 2009 at 4:40pm

What I've done once (and may start doing all the time) is ferment a low to lowish gravity batch, wash/rinse the yeast, and split it into a few jars and chuck them in the fridge. Then use one jar into a starter. This way you've got 2 - 4 samples that will all be in the same generation.

A little more work but worth a look maybe?

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Permalink Reply by Greig McGill on August 18, 2009 at 8:58am

Conveniently, Jamil and co have just done an entire show on this.

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Permalink Reply by Karle on August 18, 2009 at 9:03am

Here is a tutorial: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/yeast-washing-illustrated-41768/

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Permalink Reply by Reviled on August 18, 2009 at 9:36am

I normally do do the whole wash and split into seperate bottles, then use them as desired for starters, however, if ive got a big cake of yeast to use, I dont bother with a starter cos theres no need!! Just dump the new unfermented wort straight onto the cake!! Especially with a lager as I generally do a 10litre starter for them anywho, and from experiance ive allways made the best cleanest lagers when theres a big fuck off cake in the fermenter to pitch on??

On average from every starter I make ill get about 3 brews from it just by pitching onto the cake.. But as i said above I do it ASAP after the beer on top has been kegged...

My WBC IPA was pitched this way, onto a gen III US-05 cake - will I get marked down for it? Well see...

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Permalink Reply by studio1 on August 18, 2009 at 9:51am

in the case of an ale - is this massively over pitching?

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Permalink Reply by Reviled on August 18, 2009 at 10:01am

Apparantly so, however I personally havnt found any negative results from it! And ive also read that theres no such thing as overpitching, think of the positives, theres gotta be less chance of infection because of how much yeast there is? Theres definately going to be enough healthy cells to do the job? I reckon its all good...

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Permalink Reply by denimglen on August 18, 2009 at 6:07pm

Nah, I believe there is such thing as overpitching.

All those yeast in the trub have just fermented a beer, you dump a fresh batch of beer on there and while there's enough cells there they're all tired, you need them to reproduce to make new healthy cells.

The reproduction cycle is where the yeast produce all their flavour compounds, even in a lager you still want some ester production.

I'm also not keen on doubling the amount of non-yeast trub in the batch that's dumped on the cake.

All IMO though, if it works for you - choice :-P

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Permalink Reply by JoKing on August 18, 2009 at 7:15pm

I agree with you Glen.

The only reason you need more for lagers is because of the fermentation temperature. If you fermented at 20 degrees with an "ale pitch" of lager yeast, it would fully attenuate in the same way as Ale yeast. Would taste pretty shit though.

Over pitching isn't as bad as underpitching though - so if you were to do one over the other - I know which one I'd choose.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Neilson on August 18, 2009 at 7:37pm

I would choose overpitch. Case swap was a full pitch of 1469 slurry from my NZ Ordinary bitter. I was going to post it in the NZ Case Swap but forgot. so that was a 20L starter for a 1.045 beer, opps my bad!!

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Permalink Reply by Stu McKinlay on December 19, 2010 at 8:55pm

You know you have overpitched when your 1.100 barleywine gets to 1.015 overnight. And the temp jumped from 20c at pitching time to 28c the next day... the result: 20L down the drain.

Experience. Can't beat it for teaching yo'self a harsh lesson.

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