I will be bottling a batch tonight. I have another extract kit (Dead Ringer) that uses the same yeast. The O.G. of the first beer is 1.062. Unfortunately I can’t brew today, so throwing it on the existing yeast cake isn’t an option. I’ve never done that, so have some questions on that as well.
The beer I’m bottling is dry-hopped, I threw the hops right in the carboy, no bag. If I was able to brew today, how do you remove the hops so they don’t alter the new beer? When you do this do you use the same carboy? Doesn’t that have the potential to alter the taste of the new beer?
Since I can’t do that however, my plan is to just harvest the yeast in mason jars and reuse it later this week. I haven’t used this technique yet either. Same question on getting rid of the hops in the trub? How much do I pitch? Do I ust decant it after settling in the fridge, then warm it to room temp when ready to brew? The new beer has the same 1.062 O.G.
I’m currently have 6th generation yeast harvested, from my Dead Ringer brews, ready to pitch again. I strain the boil hop debris during the pour into the fermentor, but the dry hops are added without a bag. I swirl up the contents of the fermentor, after racking to the bottling bucket, and then fill one sanitized quart jar. This one jar will yield about 375 to 400 milliliters of yeast, after compacting for a week. I estimate 2 billion cells per milliliter up to two months from harvest date.
The amount of old hops added to the next brew, with the harvested yeast, will be such a small amount there won’t be any noticeable effect.
My preferred repitch method:
a. Cold crash my beer at about 35F for a day or two (or five) about a week after I’ve confirmed it has finished fermenting.
b. keg batch #1 while I’m brewing batch #2.
c. Leave the fermenter with the yeast in my ferm fridge until I’m ready to run the chilled wort from the boil kettle into the fermenter.
d. Run the wort onto the yeast from the previous batch with plenty of splashing. Do not warm the yeast. Warmer yeast into cooler wort can (maybe, according to some brewers) slow the yeasts’ ability to restart. Cooler yeast into warmer wort (supposedly) does not insult the yeast. I’ve seen the same thing, but have not cllected enough data to say it’s absolutely correct.
e Reset the ferm chamber temp to the desired ferm temp.
d. Return the fermenter to the ferm fridge.
If The beer is ready to keg before I’m ready to brew: leave the fermenter, with the yeast in it, in the ferm chamber/fridge at 35F until I’m ready to brew - up to a couple of weeks.
Yes, that constitutes an over-pitch. You can pour the yeast plus trub plus hop debris into STERILE jars and store them in your refrigerator. That makes it easier to use the recommended 1/3 to 1/2 of the yeast for your next batch. Some yeast pitch calculators will help you estimate the cell count for your yeast slurry.
I’ve not noticed any carry-over of flavors from the previous batch of beer or any hops that went into the fermenter. I generally recycle my yeast three times. By the third time I’m concerned that my lax sanitation is about to bite me, so I start a fresh batch.
Having said all that, please note that others know a lot more about yeast and many would potentially notice flavors carrying over from the yeast cake.
Wow, after bottling and harvesting the yeast, I think I made a big blunder. This was the secondary. I should have harvested the yeast from the primary fermentation vessel, right?
I had about 3 ounces of hop pellets in the secondary, tried using the paint strainer to get most of the hop material out, but it just plugged up, wouldn’t let anything through. That’s when I realized most of the stuff left was hops.
I’m a newbie, so am not sure my thinking is right, but I think I should have saved the yeast from the primary.
Don’t really need either. Oxygen is to facilitate cell growth. When you pitch on a slurry, you have so many cells to start with that growth isn’t an issue.
