New yeast pitch or Yeast Cake

[Scut_Monkey]

So I brewed a maibock that called for it to be fermented at ale temperatures of 65F. Everything went well and racked off of the yeast cake.
Planning to brew another maibock (different recipe) that will ferment at 50F. I'm wondering if I should pitch onto the yeast cake I have or start from scratch with a new pitch. Ordinarily I would pitch right onto the yeast cake with no hesitation but I have little experience with lagers and wanted to get some more experienced opinions. There is no good way, that I am aware of, to determine the cell count for a yeast cake without a hemocytometer or cell counter equivalent.

1. How do I know I am not over/underpitching a lager.

2. If this yeast cake sat for 2 weeks under beer and then 1 additional week at room temp after the beer was racked off would it still be ok? I can't see why it wouldn't be.

Rather easy questions that I feel I know the answers to with ales but wanted to see what brewers with more experience with lagers have seen.

 

[Yooper]

If you used ale yeast for the first beer, you will want to ferment at ale temperatures. For lager fermentation temperatures, you'll want to use a lager yeast.

 

[Scut_Monkey]

It's a lager yeast. German bock lager WLP833. That does birng up a good point. By fermenting first at 65 and now at 50 would the yeast be ok with this. I can't see why it would hurt anything. We make starters at room temp and add them to wort at lager temperatures.

 

[wyzazz]

I'd pitch on to the cake if it was a "clean" beer. As long as it wasn't hop crazy or darker than your new batch it should be OK.

 

[Scut_Monkey]

I'd pitch on to the cake if it was a "clean" beer. As long as it wasn't hop crazy or darker than your new batch it should be OK.

The two beers will be very very similar. They are both maibocks except one was fermented at 65 and the other will be at 50F. I'm going to go with it. I just wonder if it will affect the yeast cake since it has sat for a week at 65 without any beer on top. I figure it will be fine. They are pretty tough little guys. It's my lack of experience brewing lagers that has me second guessing.

 

[wyzazz]

If there is a layer of liquid on top of the yeast cake and the fermenter is sealed it should be good to go!

 

[Scut_Monkey]

So I finished the fermentation on this beer. It is interesting as each seperator fermentor produced slightly different beers. The one beer finished approximately 4 points higher with specific gravity and had a much more neutral taste with less esters. Both taste very good but I'm thinking one of the corny kegs had a more healthy pitch of yeast and did better with the fermentation. The tastes were very similar so I ultimately decided to blend the two together and let them lager together which I started last night.