how could I preserve a yeast cake?

If I uncorked my better bottle and racked the rye beer in there to the bottling bucket, then immediately re-corked the better-bottle with the yeast cake inside, could I save it and pitch (a weizenbock) onto it the next day? How long do you think it would last and remain viable and clean without it's 'beer' covering (lets assume it's kept at 55-60 degrees and sealed in my basement)?

Without at least a small layer of beer, I wouldn't let it sit for more than a day.

Alternatively, just wash the yeast and you can reuse it at your leisure.

yeah, but I want the whole entire cake.....The dark rye was brewed, in part, as a starter for a 1.090 Weizenbock.....I suppose that I should just not tempt fate by brewing a large, kinda spendy beer and dumping it onto a questionable cake, probably not the best idea, eh?

In your original post you said that you planned on brewing your second batch the next day. I think that would be fine, just be sure to cover the carboy with sanitized tinfoil to keep bacteria out.

As for washing the yeast, any time you pitch onto a yeast cake you're overpitching yeast by a massive margin. It's almost impossible to overpitch yeast to the point of off flavors, at least on a homebrewers scale, but you just don't need that much yeast. According to Mr Malty, you're going to want a 2 liter starter to provide the perfect amount of viable yeast cells for 5 gallons of a 1.090 beer, which could easily be made from one little mason jar worth of washed yeast.

Either way will work, just don't let that yeast cake sit for too long before you make up your mind.

24 hours at those temps should be just fine.

I did something similar once. I poured some boiled, distilled water onto the yeast cake to thin it out a bit. I then poured the thinner yeast cake (everything sanitized of course) back into a 1 gallon container. This went in the fridge. The next day, I racked the beer off and added some more boiled, distilled water. The next day, I racked the beer off again. This sat in the fridge for another 2 days before I split the yeast to make 2 5-gallon batches of barleywine. It took it from 1.109 to 1.022 in about a week and it tasted great.

It worked perfectly for me. I kinda made up the technique as a hybrid between yeast washing and repitching on the cake, mostly because I needed some time between racking off the initial beer and re-using and I was also splitting the cake into two batches.

ajwillys said:

...I poured some boiled, distilled water onto the yeast cake to thin it out a bit....

Click to expand...

Just to clarify...the water was cooled after being boiled.

BierMuncher said:

Just to clarify...the water was cooled after being boiled.

Click to expand...

True, good point. Actually, it was room temperature as was the yeast. When handling yeast, you always want to change the temperature slowly.

thanks guys. I decided just to clear my schedule today and brew the WB/bottle the rye altogether.....Now you've got me worried that I'm horribly overpitching.

If the yeast cake were in a bucket I would reach down and scoop out a couple liters of slurry, but since it's in a better bottle, I'm unsure how to get out some of the yeast in a sanitary enough way....my plan was just to dump the wort right back into the better bottle. any suggestions otherwise?

Just use the yeast cake. And yes, simply pour your cooled wort right into the Better Bottle. It would be very difficult on a homebrew scale to overpitch a 1.090 beer.

Chad

Well, I pulled a 1.080 out of the grains....I was looking for 1.090, but good enough. It's going to be a mighty strong wheat beer, all smoothed out and ready to go in the fall.

It was amazing to watch the clumps of the yeast cake slowly rise to the surface of the wort after funneling it in to the carboy. That 3068 yeast really does like to be on top! I have it in a cold water bath to keep it from blowing the hell up on me....

In the future you may want to just swirl the cake up in the better bottle and then pour out a full quart mason jar full. I, and many of our club members do this often, and store in the fridge for up to a couple months with most yeasts. Hefe yeast is a little more perishable and should be used within a week. I rack with CO2 but I doubt if you will have an issue if you don't. Derek

Here's a quick question: I pitched the wort onto the cake at 69F yesterday.....it started bubbling nearly immediately (within an hour or two). Since pitching, I've had it sitting in a cold water bath with a wet towel draped over it (swamp cooler style) to bring the temp down and keep the violent fermentation in check.....going by the temp strip it seems to have worked; it dropped to 65 by 9pm last night and was down at 62-63 this morning when I woke up. It is, however, bubbling like crazy out of the blow-off tube and the smell is very remniscient of the chlorophenol (band-aid) odor from bad batches I've had in the past (keep in mind that I've never smelled it during fermentation like this though)....can that smell be a normal by-product of fermentation? Could the temps really be so much higher inside the carboy that they are causing that smell?

tell me I'm just worrying over nothing!