Yeast cake from secondary?

my friends and I are planning on brewing our 1st 10 gallon batch of a porter. Rather than making a starter, I am wondering if I could just use the yeastcake from the 2ndary of an irish red that I made 2 weeks ago. I am using the same yeast, but not sure if being in with the irish red would impact the performance of the yeast in the porter.

I have no empirical evidence, but a lot of people don't recommend using yeast from the secondary. The reason being, yeast from the secondary is more stressed than yeast from the primary. So, you may have a lot of yeast in your secondary, but it may not be the healthiest/most viable. Yeast count isn't just about numbers. You're sending yeast into battle. Would you rather have an army of 5 billion sick old grandmas or 1 million young, healthy soldiers?

Do you usually have a lot of yeast in your secondary? I rarely have more than a thin layer of sediment at the bottom, far less than I'd want to pitch for 10 gallons of beer.

Not to mention the fact that the yeast that makes it into secondary is the less flocculant of the yeast. It's the underproductive yeast, as opposed to the hard charging, go getting yeast that actually fermented the original beer. It's like trying to count on the second string football team to win the superbowl, think they'll have a chance to actually win?

Revvy said:

Not to mention the fact that the yeast that makes it into secondary is the less flocculant of the yeast. It's the underproductive yeast, as opposed to the hard charging, go getting yeast that actually fermented the original beer. It's like trying to count on the second string football team to win the superbowl, think they'll have a chance to actually win?

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Not if they're the Vikings.

+1 to Revvy. A second problem with using the less flocculant yeast is that yeast RAPIDLY selects for low flocculance. Your finished product will be VERY hazy in just one or two iterations.