I brewed a nice porter using WLP002 a month ago. The yeast was highly flocculant as advertised; the beer was almost clear when I racked it to the secondary. So I decided to pitch a batch of pale ale onto the yeast cake from the porter. It started nicely and fermented out at 1.012 which is pretty good for this yeast strain. Strangely, however, the second batch is super cloudy. It's now at two weeks in the primary and there are even cottage cheese curd sized chunks of yeast suspended throughout the beer column. I don't think these are ever going to fall out of suspension.
Question is, how do I get these large chunks of yeast to fall to the bottom without filtering? I'm wondering if a dose of gelatin will even affect the large yeast clumps. Secondly, why the vast difference in behavior between the original yeast and the washed yeast? Did washing select only for the non-flocculant strains I wonder?
I brewed a nice porter using WLP002 a month ago. The yeast was highly flocculant as advertised; the beer was almost clear when I racked it to the secondary. So I decided to pitch a batch of pale ale onto the yeast cake from the porter. It started nicely and fermented out at 1.012 which is pretty good for this yeast strain. Strangely, however, the second batch is super cloudy. It's now at two weeks in the primary and there are even cottage cheese curd sized chunks of yeast suspended throughout the beer column. I don't think these are ever going to fall out of suspension.
Question is, how do I get these large chunks of yeast to fall to the bottom without filtering? I'm wondering if a dose of gelatin will even affect the large yeast clumps. Secondly, why the vast difference in behavior between the original yeast and the washed yeast? Did washing select only for the non-flocculant strains I wonder?
I haven't reused WLP002 yet so I don't know if this is typical but as far as trying to get them out of suspension, do you have a refrigerator with enough space. A good 4 days in the fridge should do the job.
Shake it around a little. You may have some CO2 trapped in those clumps. Also, you can expect the less flocculant cells (yes, there is variation) in the cake to be the ones doing most of the work, as the more flocculant ones likely did not wake up so much to ferment the next batch.
TL
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1+ on cold crashing, if you have the room and can crash both your primary for 4 days, and then crash your secondary for 4 days before you bottle/keg you will have nice, clear beer.
FWIW, When I washed my first WLP002 cake, I didn't shake it up enought o break up the clumps, and ended up with very, very little sediment in my mason jars, and I also had yeastbergs floating in my primary when I racked to the bottling bucket.
WLP002 is a great yeast and strange at the same time.
Suspended chunks of WLP002 English Ale yeast?
FWIW, When I washed my first WLP002 cake, I didn't shake it up enought o break up the clumps, and ended up with very, very little sediment in my mason jars, and I also had yeastbergs floating in my primary when I racked to the bottling bucket.
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