Thinking about brewing a Wee Heavy pretty soon here. I’ve been a little unsure as to how much yeast to pitch for such a big beer (1.080 or higher). Instead of doing a starter I was thinking of brewing an 80 shilling first then pouring the Wee Heavy wort on that trub. Any thoughts? I’m probably going to use wlp028.
I would harvest a third of the yeast cake for another time and pitch on the rest.
Thats what I did with my current Strong Scotch ale, brewed a 70/- then pitched on some of that cake (WLP028). Its still fermenting after two weeks. Just watch your ferm temp whenpitching on a big slug of yeast, things can really take off.
That’s what I generally do. I use 1/3 of a yeast cake for standard beers, and anywhere from 1/2 to 2/3 for the stronger ones.
Right on. Thanks for all of the input. so once you’re ready to pitch it do you just pull it out of the fridge and pitch as is or should I warm it up a bit?
Chill the wort to ~2F below the desired fermentation temp and pitch the yeast straight out of the fridge, no need to warm. (Going up in temp is good for yeast.)
You could pitch the yeast right from the fridge, although I have read (but don’t recall where I read it) that the drastic temperature change could shock the yeasties a bit. I usually take the yeast out of the fridge at the start of the brew day and by the time it goes into the wort some hours later it has warmed up a bit.
But having said that, I will also say that when I forgot to do so, there were no ill effects (except perhaps for the fermentation taking just a bit longer to get churning).
