I am going to be brewing the same brew I have in one of my fermenters next week and was curious if I can just throw the wort into the bucket on top of the cake? I have seen it talked about but I have not found anything definitive.
Thanks
Thanks
Pitching to yeast cake
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Felixio
Well-Known Member
It is entirely possible, though you may be over pitching your yeast. (Check with Mr. Malty's Yeast Calculator to be sure.) Instead you may want look up the sticky on yeast washing and see if that would be a better option for you.
temple240
Well-Known Member
The results will depend on the type of beer (i.e. Alcohol content, dry hops...). Regardless, if you pitch on the entire year cake you will be way over pitching.
I would prefer to use a clean fermenter and transfer an appropriate amount of yeast but that's just personal preference.
I would prefer to use a clean fermenter and transfer an appropriate amount of yeast but that's just personal preference.
What is the OG of the brews? If they are too high (1.070 and higher), you may not want to reuse the yeast as they will be pretty stressed from that. But if it's low enough and if you are going to be brewing back to back, I wouldn't worry about washing the yeast, but you'd want to use a measured amount, not the whole yeast cake as you will probably be overpitching by a lot and you will have more of the undesirable trub from the old batch going in the new batch.
You can calculate from MrMalty, but I made my own calculator which is basically:
millions of cells needed = batch size (in ml) x OG (in degree Plato; use an online calculator to convert) x 0.75 (which is the millions of cells per ml per degree Plato needed)
Then you assume 1 billion cells in 1 ml harvested harvested slurry. So you take the number from above, divide by 1000 to get the number needed in billions of cells and since you are assuming 1 billion cells/1 ml harvested slurry, that number calculated is the ml of slurry needed, which you can convert to oz or cups in order to measure the amount of slurry to pitch.
I've used this method to make a high gravity imperial stout from a low gravity stout. It worked well.
You can calculate from MrMalty, but I made my own calculator which is basically:
millions of cells needed = batch size (in ml) x OG (in degree Plato; use an online calculator to convert) x 0.75 (which is the millions of cells per ml per degree Plato needed)
Then you assume 1 billion cells in 1 ml harvested harvested slurry. So you take the number from above, divide by 1000 to get the number needed in billions of cells and since you are assuming 1 billion cells/1 ml harvested slurry, that number calculated is the ml of slurry needed, which you can convert to oz or cups in order to measure the amount of slurry to pitch.
I've used this method to make a high gravity imperial stout from a low gravity stout. It worked well.
