Yeast cake

[backbacon]

First time pitching wort directly on the yeast cake of beer I just transferred to the secondary. WOW! I had the craziest yeast activity in just 2 hours! I have never seen yeast do that before. Hopefully it turns out delicious.

[mr x]

Yeast cakes are devastating for sure.

[backbacon]

I was shocked by the results. Do you have experience doing this

[mr x]

Yup. Massive 'overpitch' in a yeastcake.

[backbacon]

So, have you ever pitched on a cake 2 times in a row, or should I clean the yeast next time? Thanks Mr. X

[mr x]

Probably worth rinsing if your sanitation is good, or pour off some of the cake at least.

[GAM]

I do this on occasion. Nash tells me not to.

Sandy

[Jimmy]

From the readings, pitching directly on top of the yeast cake is not recommended...with that being said, I know of at least a few on here that have done it and told me they found no "negative" side effects from doing so.

[backbacon]

Thanks for the added info. I will check these results before I do it again, that being said, I'm not sure what it could hurt?

[Jimmy]

From mrmalty.com:

You might ask why not pitch as much yeast as possible? There is also an upper limit to how much yeast you should add. Logsdon says, "I try to stay within 20% of my ideal pitch rate and I prefer to slightly under pitch rather than over pitch. This causes more cell growth, more esters, and better yeast health. Over pitching causes other problems with beer flavor, such as a lack of esters. Changes in the flavor profile are noticeable when the pitch rates are as little as 20% over the recommended amount."

[backbacon]

So, if I poor off some of the cake, it should be ok? Leave only enough cake to match the calculated amount of slurry(eyeball it of course) Thanks again,

[Jimmy]

That's pretty much the idea behind it. You can use mrmalty.com calculator to figure out approximately how much yeast slurry you need..just adjust the sliders under "repitching from slurry" to match your yeast cake.

[backbacon]

Cheers!

[Maritimer]

I'm thinking about trying this slurry method for the first time, pitching a 1.052ish brown porter onto a 1.056 bitter yeast cake, I tried the Mr. Malty calculator and it says I only need 100ml of slurry. That doesn't seem like very much, I'm planning on pouring out and washing 3/4 of the cake and pitching on the remaining 1/4 cake in the carboy. Any flaws in my logic here? I'm guessing I have roughly 1L of cake in the carboy.

[jtmwhyte]

Slurry is crazy dense worth yeast cells

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[mr x]

Depends a bit on age too. If it's fresh, it's probably pretty good as mentioned above. I most likely use closer to 200ml though anyway.

[Maritimer]

Thanks, I'm planning on racking the old brew during my mash, so the yeast is still kicking a bit. Pouring the cake into a jar and pitching 200ml into the next batch. The whole objective it to avoid washing my yeast.