Pitching onto a yeast cake?

Yeast & Fermentation
1

I’ve used some refrigerated yeast slurry 4 or 5 times for repitching 05 cakes. I’ve never actually pitched on top of a yeast cake before. So if I planned on brewing tomorrow afternoon, I could transfer the wort in the primary to a secondary, put the lid back on the primary, go brew a new wort and pitch it right on top of this one?

Maybe I should just save the cake in a mason jar as I have in the past. I’m keen to make Ken’s Memory Lapse, which has very little hop profile yet the beer I’ve got in the primary is an IPA. I probably shouldn’t mix the yeast cake from the IPA to a session beer…

I guess my big question is when I ever do actually pitch a new wort onto a yeast cake can I just do it like I usually do and stick a sanitized 5 gallon straining bag over the bucket with the cake in it? Just pour the new wort right in? I don’t have to worry about blasting the old yeast cake to kingdom come by pouring 5 gallons of wort into the bucket?

2

While i don’t use buckets, I can’t see the straining bag causing a problem. The only time I’ve reused a whole cake was from a light low gravity beer (1056 from NB shining star - 1.044 gravity or so) and threw 5 gals of a DIPA (1.085) on top.

The Shining Star is only pils and carastan so very light in color, and the hops used in the brew were identical to what I was throwing on top. So in this case the cake was from a 4-5 srm brew low grav, and I threw a 11 SRM high grav on top. I likely over pitched a bit.

One word of advice, start with a blowoff tube…that mother will start within a couple hours!!!

3

Roger that and thanks!

4

Most of the time I wash, but when you have two recipes so close…why not!!
:cheers:

BTW, i’m behind on posting reviews but daaaaamn I loved your Stucco House IPA!!! Great bitterness and hop flavor, but so much malt to counter play it…honestly I think if you upped it a couple points and let it age, you’d have a beast of a barleywine!!
That malt presence in that is what i’ve looked for in my past few ipa’s…well done!!!

edit* And sending a bomber of it, loved it!!! Two glasses of a bomb ipa!!

5

Thanks for the props. You don’t have to tell my any white lies though ha! I will say I’ve been ‘somewhat happy’ with most of my beers but I always find one or two things about each of them that I would or will change next time I brew them. I’m so new to this that it’s like I don’t even know where to start. I’ve done 3 NB kits, but the other 10 or so beers I’ve brewed have been made up bulls$#% recipes, that ipa being one of them. I really planned on finding a couple beers I really liked and tweaking them till I got them just where I wanted them, but there are so many options out there, even for an extract brewer like myself, that I can’t continue working on just one beer.

That ipa was based loosely on a clone recipe for a beer called Manny’s Pale Ale which is only served draft in Washington state. A bit of Crystal for steeping, some extract, Magnum for bittering, then some Cascade (both aroma and dryhop).

That recipe was my first beer ever made. I didn’t think it tasted ‘dank’ enough to be a Manny’s Clone, so I decided I’d use Summit for bittering, and then figured wtf, (and totally went in a different direction of course :mrgreen: ) I’ll add some Centennial and Citra, and then to top it off I also dry hopped with Citra and Centennial ha… That beer actually turned out better, at least to my thinking, than the beer I sent you.

The beer I sent you was supposed to be the same recipe, but then I thought, "Why don’t I make it more Amber and why don’t I try some Amarillo to dry hop with.

So what you got was 1lb Carapils, 1lb Crystal 60L, 8 pnds Gold Extract (instead of Pilsner), 1 oz Summit for bittering, 1 oz each of Citra and Cent at 5 min and then 1 oz of Amarillo for DH, fermented with 05 yeast slurry from a previous batch of beer.

I think I’m going to drop back and do the 2nd recipe again for my next IPA.

So to sum up this long post, I hope you liked it. Don’t be shy to tell me what you really think though cuz I need help ha. I’m addicted to making beer and I want it to be good.

Tomorrow I’m dropping back down out of the hop hemisphere to brew Kens’ Memory Lapse session beer. Wish me luck!

6

I did it once, pouring new wort onto the old cake with very good results HOWEVER one change in your process:

Wait to rack the old beer out until after your new wort is chilled and ready to transfer. There is less exposure to undesirable elements, including O2.

It seemed strange pouring my nice new wort onto that slop, and seeing the mess raise up and mix in with the wort. Fermentation started within an hour, before I was done bottling the beer I had removed from the bucket. Fast and furious for a couple of days. The new beer turned out great.