Beer yeast cake

So I just put my porter(beer) from primary to secondary yesterday. When I got down to the bottom I noticed a very nice and clean yeast cake. Most of my beer the yeast cakes are not so clean looking. So I got thinking that I have never reused a yeast cake and I decide to pour 5 gallons of store bought juice right on top and airerate it and see what comes of it. Boy this cider took of in like two hours and I was very close to having to go from airlock to a blow off tube. 24 hours later a very steady and active ferment. Thought I would share and see what others have done. Thsnks


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

awesome what kind of yeast?

S-04


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

I just went the opposite direction and racked a stout on to a Nottingham yeast cake from a cider yesterday. It got a slow start but is happily bubbling away once I moved it to a warmer part of the basement.

A porter might be contributing some flavor to your cider. Do you have enough room in our fermentor to add some DME and make a graff?

How would I go about adding the dme since it's all ready fermenting. Plus I was thinking about dry hopping with some leaf hops. Maybe cascade not sure yet


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

Smitty49686 said:

How would I go about adding the dme since it's all ready fermenting. Plus I was thinking about dry hopping with some leaf hops. Maybe cascade not sure yet

Click to expand...

Depends on how much head space you have. Could you fit a half gallon more into your carboy and use a blow-off tube? If so just boil up the DME on your stove top (possibly with some hops), chill it in an ice bath, and add it to your carboy. Nothing says you couldn't do it all grain but DME is easy. Take a look the Brandon O's Graff recipe for inspiration and adapt it however it makes sense to you. Think of it as step feeding your cider, mead makers step feed honey all the time and there's no reason other than a lack of head space that you can't do it to cider too.


I've got a bunch of Cascade I grew that I haven't tried in cider yet but half an oz of whole cone Goldings in three gallons of apple wine for a week was pretty awesome.

Two questions:
1. What kind of juice? Did you just use straight up apple juice,100%, from concentrate?
2. Maybe this is off topic, but you said your yeast cake looked pretty good. I have noticed a lot of variation in the appearance of my yeast cakes. Some look like watery brown cottage cheese and some look like you could bounce a quarter off em. Does anybody have any idea what factors affect the density of a yeast cake? I use S-04 on a regular basis and I've noticed differences with both all grain and extract batches.

CliftIndy, since most of the particulate has been removed from the extract before it is sold, an all grain batch will have a very different looking yeast cake; let me guess, the extract batches are the "watery" looking ones?

CliftIndy said:

Two questions:
1. What kind of juice? Did you just use straight up apple juice,100%, from concentrate?
2. Maybe this is off topic, but you said your yeast cake looked pretty good. I have noticed a lot of variation in the appearance of my yeast cakes. Some look like watery brown cottage cheese and some look like you could bounce a quarter off em. Does anybody have any idea what factors affect the density of a yeast cake? I use S-04 on a regular basis and I've noticed differences with both all grain and extract batches.

Click to expand...

English yeast strains are notably more clumpy, especially WLP002 which looks like cottage cheese in the vial. Some, like S04 and Nottingham, aren't clumpy but compact down into tightly packed yeast cakes, while some strains are very low flocculating and remain 'fluffy' throughout and are easily disturbed in the bottom of the fermenter.

MindenMan said:

CliftIndy, since most of the particulate has been removed from the extract before it is sold, an all grain batch will have a very different looking yeast cake; let me guess, the extract batches are the "watery" looking ones?

Click to expand...

I snagged some wort from a professional brewery in Indianapolis and boiled up a batch with it and pitched S-04. That was the prettiest yeast cake I can ever recall seeing. Dense and level.
My next batch was an ESB with both DME and LME also pitching S-04. Kept in primary about 3 and a half weeks at about 64 degrees. The yeast cake looked just the same as the professional all grain stuff which is what really confused me as I'd attributed the appearence of the cake to the wort composition.

You're 100% correct on the cottage cheese cakes from extract batches but this last ESB really threw me off after seeing the result of the professional stuff.