pitch on top or not

[Sewer_Urchen]

So I have a summer ale I cooked up yesterday going with US-05. In a few weeks I plan on racking it and doing a stout in the same primary fermenter. The summer brew has lemon and lime zest as well as lemongrass, and is a wheat beer.

what I'm wondering is if I should rack that to the secondary, and pitch my stout wort right on top of the US-05 yeast cake (my concern is imparting some of the lemon flavor into the stout)?

or should I just wash out the fermenter and start from scratch with the US-04 packet I originally bought for the stout?

If I pour on top of the cake, should I wash the yeast first and pitch the washed yeast in?

Thoughts?

 

[stpug]

For me, considering all of the zest and lemongrass I would not directly pitch anything on top of it unless you intend on that new beer having those characteristics (and not even the best part of those characteristics because they were already used up).

You CAN wash up some of that us05 yeastcake and reuse the washed yeast, assuming you do a good job washing/rinsing the yeast to leave behind as much trub/zest/grass as possible. This is a viable route if you have a few days between brews. Alternatively, you could reuse a small portion of the yeastcake (<1 cup) for the new beer and cross your fingers that none of the citrusy stuff comes through.

However, if you plan on your stout being a little sweet (i.e. a sweet stout) then you are just better off going with s04 because it won't attenuate nearly as well as us05 leaving you with a sweeter stout. If you wanted a dry stout then us05 would be a better route.

 

[Sewer_Urchen]

Thanks, that was what I was thinking. I think I'll just stick with my original game plan of using the 04. I'll just get a starter going a few days before, thanks!