Question about reusing yeast cake/slurry

[etrain666]

Hoping I can get a bit of advice. I have a Cali Common ready to bottle today and I would really like to brew a Marzen and just use the yeast cake from the Common. What is the best way to do this? My ideas:

1. Just move the new beer into the empty carboy shake and ferment. Problem is that the bottle has a good deal of krausen grime. Not sure how much I like throwing a new beer into a nasty carboy.

2. Syphon out the slurry into a sanatized container and then pitch that into a clean carboy with new beer.

Your thoughts?

 

[duboman]

What will be the OG of the Marzen? By using the entire yeast cake you can be seriously over pitching your next beer, dead yeast cells and all the trub. A lot of people do what you want to though with little complaint but these are things you should think about. Personally I like to take the cake out and separate into smaller mason jars, cold crash for a few weeks to get everything settled out and then begin re-using as necessary and I make a small starter for each new batch to grow some additional new cells.

 

[Peppers16]

Yeah "washing" your yeast isn't very hard and means you get rid of all the crud you don't want to add to your beer.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/yeast-washing-illustrated-41768/
Basically all the rubbish stuff you don't want is quick to settle out so you just pour-off the water several times, leaving gunk behind. That just leaves living yeast suspended in the water, before they settle out.
On the same day you can just pitch it without a starter and it'll be bubbling away very quickly.

 

[SledgeH]

Scoop half or so of the cake out with a sanitized spoon and dump your new brew right on top, krausen ring be damned. It hasn't effected taste or clarity on the few I've done. If you pitch onto the whole cake you will likely get an explosive fermentation even at lower gravities. If you are worried about additional flavors and such, rack it to a secondary. It tends to ferment at pretty fast pace. A blow off tube is a must btw.

 

[jwalker1140]

Be sure to read the thread called something like 'why not to pitch onto your yeast cake.' Sorry, I'm on my phone and can't find the link. It's like the perfect compliment to the 'yeast washing illustrated' thread, imo.

 

[BobBailey]

Day before brew day: I leave a little beer in the carboy, swirl to break the cake loose and dissolve it, then pour into a sanitized 1000ml Erlenmeyer flask and cover with sanitized foil. Put it in the fridge to settle out.

Brew day: Once it has settled out, I pour off the beer and excess slurry, let it warm to a few degrees cooler than the wort and pitch. Use mrmalty to calculate the proper amount and you're in business.

bob

 

[mux]

What will be the OG of the Marzen? By using the entire yeast cake you can be seriously over pitching your next beer, dead yeast cells and all the trub. A lot of people do what you want to though with little complaint but these are things you should think about. Personally I like to take the cake out and separate into smaller mason jars, cold crash for a few weeks to get everything settled out and then begin re-using as necessary and I make a small starter for each new batch to grow some additional new cells.

I like this idea. I usually rack to secondary, for cold crashing, and dump the entire slurry into a clean and sanitized mason jar until I need not usually more than 3-4 days.

 

[etrain666]

Thanks for the ideas. I ended up pouring about half of the entire slurry into a mason jar and then pitched that. I have an enormous amount of "stuff" on the bottom of the carboy, but fermentation is well under way.