Reusing yeast cake

[higdon1976]

Hi. I have a cream ale sitting in the fermenter, finished and ready to rack to the keg. It has been there for 3 weeks.

The yeast was US-05.

My next batch is an ipa, planning on using US-05 yeast also.

Does anyone have advice to share about the possibility of using a portion of the existing yeast cake? Could I save it for a few days?

I have never reused yeast before so anything you can share would be useful.

Thanks

[RubberToe]

Yes, what I like to do is after I keg my beer I then swirl up the yeast cake and pour it into a large mason jar. Then I can clean the fermenter for the next brew and store the jar of yeast in the fridge.

If your next brew is soon, you can pitch the yeast cake as is. If it takes you quite a while then just make a fresh starter using the yeast you saved.

Yeast keeps well under beer and this is how I safe yeast from brew to brew. There are ways to rinse the yeast and decant it to avoid collecting too much hops as well.

Alternatively if you are brewing right away you can pour the new brew right on your yeast cake. I wouldn't do this many times in a row without cleaning and sanitising your fermenter though.

[DeliriumTremens]

I have done this before. I usually rack my beers into secondary for clarification purposes, a side benefit is it also cuts down on the amount of hop debris and trub in the yeast cake.

In cases where I want to keep the yeast a while, like RebberToe mentioned, I use the washing technique. There are youtube videos detailing this process better than I can explain it.

[higdon1976]

Thanks for the quick replies. Based on this I will wait a couple days to rack the cream ale so I only have to store the yeast cake for a day or two. Brew day for the pale ale is Planned for this weekend. Just waiting for my order from northwest hop farm to arrive.