Question about "yeast cake".

Good Morning All!

I'm trying out my first fruit beer and when reading a thread, one gentleman stated that he was going to start another beer after racking his current to a secondary. He also stated that he was going to put the new brew straight into the other brew's primary in order to just reuse that yeast.

My question is, to do this, since I'm in the same proverbial boat, would I need to stir it up once my wort has been dumped into the carboy? Are there any steps I need to take before hand?

Thanks in advance!

Here is a link to the wiki on yeast washing. This would generally be the preferred method of reusing yeast. That's not to say you absolutely can not reuse the entire yeast cake. When reusing a yeast cake there are some considerations that you need to take into account.

1. You are probably going to be over-pitching or pitching too much yeast. This might be ok if you are taking the cake from a really small beer and reusing on a really big beer.
2. How clean is the cake? You run the risk of imparting some flavors in the new batch from the old batch. Is there any leftover hop material mixed in with the cake?
3. Color - If the yeast cake is from a lighter beer you are probably ok.

Do you oxygenate by the shaking method? That would take care of the stirring.

No, just dump it on, oxygenate and maybe add some yeast energizer to the wort with 10 minutes to go. This isn't my preferred method of re-using yeast, but its fast, its easy and it makes beer.

You might want to search instructions for rinsing/washing yeast and only use a portion of the cake, the whole thing may be way over pitching.

As long as the yeast strain is suitable for the new beer, go for it. The only caveats I can think of, is that if you had massively dry hopped the last one, you really want to rinse because of all the junk mixed in with the yeast. That and you want to make sure your sanitation was excellent with the last one, while a small chance, any infection would get carried over.

If you rinse it, pitch like you normally do, if you decide to rack onto the cake I don't know if you need to stir it up, check the similar threads box below for more info.

you don't need to wash it, just scoop/pour out a cup or so (use mrmalty to figure out proper amount) of the cake and pitch that. the whole cake would be over-pitching, which can lead to:

Very low ester production
Very fast fermentations
Thin or lacking body/mouthfeel
Autolysis (Yeasty flavors due to lysing of cells)
http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_pitchrates.cfm

Food for thought: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/why-not-pitch-your-yeast-cake-166221/

I'm brewing tomorrow, making 10 gallons of American amber. I have a yeast cake from 5 gallons of beer that I'm going to use. I'm not going to use the whole yeast cake, though- not even from a 5 gallon batch into a 10 gallon batch. Instead, I'm using 250 ml- a lot less than the whole cake!

OK, that it would be over pitching makes more sense. I think I'll cut that down quite a bit. Thanks for the link to yeast washing!

Now, since this will be my first time doing that.....anybody know a good way to get it out of carboy?!

My general rule of thumb is to use about a quarter of the cake for a similar sized beer. It's as good an estimate as anyone can make using calculators.

Doesn't need to be washed, and probability of carrying over flavors is minimal if you have taken pretty much all the beer out. If you get into the habit of reusing yeast, you will eventually get to washing it and realize there are benefits to it, but for your first time I wouldn't bother.

When I save slurry, I swirl up the 'sludge' into a thick liquid and just pour into sanitized mason jars, and store in fridge until needed. If you are not going to wash it, it should really be used within a week (but you can get away with longer). Some people pour cooled boiled water in the fermenter to swirl up the slurry, but I've not found it necessary. It is thick at first, but will eventually become pour-able with enough swirling.