Comments on: Using a yeast cake

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:57:48 +0000

Ok, so I just bottled the first batch of beer. That one fermented from a fresh liquid yeast starter and had I.G. 1.060. It came out of the secondary at 1.014 after about 21 days total. The batch I put on the yeast cake (the one I mention above) also started out at 1.060. It fermented for 10 days and just went into secondary at 1.010. So… I won’t worry.

Thanks for the yeast washing article. It looks like something I will try this summer.

By: Joel Mahaffey

Joel Mahaffey — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:21:25 +0000

How much yeast was there at the bottom when you pitched? If you didn’t mix up the yeast cake well, you may not have released much of the yeast into solution.

I know there was probably a lot of hop trub in there, which would have re-settled back out anyway. Ideally, there woudn’t be that much trub to get in the way of the yeast, but homebrewing is usually not the ideal scenerio.

Given how much trub you had in there the first time, and definitely after the second batch, I wouldn’t re-use the yeast cake, just due to concerns about infection from all the other sludge in there.

Check this out for a good method to clean your yeast, and get it back to a more or less clean product:
Yeast washing

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:15:15 +0000

I should add:

I’m not worried. Unfortunately I’m not having a homebrew right now.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:08:53 +0000

I just used this method but fermentation seemed to proceed at a normal rate. The new wort went on the yeast cake about 11 or 12 days after the first batch started fermenting. In hindsight, I didn’t aerate the new wort vigorously for fear of washing all the junk from the first krausen into the new brew. I’ll check the gravity when I dry hop it.

Due to the limitations of volume in my secondary carboy, some of the fermented beer from the first batch had to stay and be mixed with the wort. We’ll see how it turns out.