Taking Fermenting Wort and putting it into New Wort

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bierzwinski

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I was planning on brewing the other day but i wanted to put my new wort on some yeast cake. The problem was that the wort in the fermenter with the yeast cake was not done fermenting.

I had a thought that maybe i could just siphon out some of the fermenting wort and put it into my new wort.

Would that work? Has anyone ever done that before? Or would it be difficult to get enough yeast into the new wort that way?

Is this a bad idea?
 
doing that will transfer a portion of the yeast from the first batch to the second. you would probably be under pitching that way. but the yeast will grow and multiply up to the proper population in the second batch.
 
I don't think you would get any where close to the correct amount of yeast and it would probably take a while to get things going.

Can you siphon brew 1 into a secondary fermentor and then pitch brew 2 on to the yeast cake?

How long has Brew 1 been in primary?
 
I kind of worried that it would not be pitching enough or to get enough i would have to transfer so much of brew 1 that it would not make sense.

TechyDork - brew 1 has been in primary for 1.5 weeks and the air lock is still bubbling every 15 - 20 seconds. I read elsewhere that it is not good to transfer if the wort is that active.

I was also wondering if there was a way to siphon out of the yeast cake, but it seems risky and i have some whole hop petals in there that will probably clog the siphon.
 
i'm interested to hear more about this, i'm thinking its similar,but different to krausening. my uneducated guess would be that if you transfered enough then there would be enough yeast,especially if you stirred the cake up a bit and syphonned from the bottom?
i'm assuming its the same brew or at least similar?
i wonder if you couldn't do a swap,say,remove 2 gallons and replace that with 2 gallons of fresh?
don't take this as advise,its just musings from the top of my head
curious to hear what others think.
 
I'm sort of trying to figure out the laziest and cheapest way to pitch with a minimal amount of equipment.

I guess, if I didn't care how long it took the new wort to get active, I could do it this way, but then i am of course risking infection.

I don't know why brew 1 is taking so long. i have never had one ferment for this long. I'm using the Wyeast bavarian wheat strain (can't remember the number). Does anyone else find that these ferment for a long time?

This is not a high gravity brew (forgot to take OG). should be around 1.05 or something near that.
 
couldn't you just get another packet of yeast and pitch that in the new brew?

that would be like $3.00

I am assuming you have two fermenters.
 
Yeah. I hear you. the Wyeast is more like $7 and i am trying to get ideas for harvesting the yeast without pitching on the cake (bcs of the troub) and without doing the yeast wash which seems like it might be a bit of work. Trying to see how few $$ i can spend and still make good brew.

Maybe this idea just won't work though. Or maybe it just isn't worth it. I have one more fermenter available but it is a plastic bucket and not much fun to watch as i cannot see into it. (I like to watch the stuff in action!) I use it for a secondary and planned to put this one that won't stop fermenting into it. I just looked at it though and it is close to done... but i don't think it is going to be done in time for a Sat brew session.

OFF TOPIC - yup, Wichita... looking to get out though as soon as we can to CO.
 
Instead of siphoning the fermenting wort, use a spoon to scoop a quart of trub off of the bottom, and throw that into another primary. Add the new wort on top of the trub. I've done that a couple of times and it works fine.

I use one yeast pack for at least 7 or 8 batches of beer, I just keep recycling the trub.
 
But I use glass carboys... so i don't have a way to do that, except i've thought of just swirling it and dumping into another carboy. I also just drain the beer and dump on top of the yeast left in there.
 
There was a paper I read about a brewery doing continuous fermentation, by pulling beer off and adding new wort periodically. Very similar to what you want to do, but you only want to do it once. I can't recall if they went into ratio details, but I remember thinking it would be cool to setup an automated gallon at a time continuous setup, just to say I did it.

I'll see if I can find the link.

Edit: found it. Hopefully it pastes correct from phone app.
http://nzic.org.nz/ChemProcesses/food/6A.pdf
 
There was a paper I read about a brewery doing continuous fermentation, by pulling beer off and adding new wort periodically. Very similar to what you want to do, but you only want to do it once. I can't recall if they went into ratio details, but I remember thinking it would be cool to setup an automated gallon at a time continuous setup, just to say I did it.

I'll see if I can find the link.

Edit: found it. Hopefully it pastes correct from phone app.
http://nzic.org.nz/ChemProcesses/food/6A.pdf

Yep good old Murton Coutts from DB (one of NZ's big 2 who have done some pretty famous things... like trademark "radler")
Anyway getting off topic. Basically the continuos fermentation is similar but completely different to what the OP is doing. It is more like the post where someone suggested syphoning out the trub from under the beer.
 
But I use glass carboys... so i don't have a way to do that, except i've thought of just swirling it and dumping into another carboy. I also just drain the beer and dump on top of the yeast left in there.

put your racking cane down into the center of the yeast cake where all the good yeast is, swirl it a little bit to loosen it up, and then suck some of that up. I have done it before and it works very well. It will pull a lot of beer too, so be sure to get enough. I used about 750ml for a 6 gallon batch of 1.067 beer and it was more than enough for a vigorous and quick ferment.
 
Yeah, my memory of it was a little different. Still cool.

I'd love to see experiments with different yeast at peak fermentation. Take two cups of actively fermenting wort, chill, measure yeast volume. That would give some idea of how much wort would need to be transferred to get proper pitch rates by wort transfer alone. There may be much less in suspension than i think. Lots of variables, but would be cool to try.
 
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