Newbie curiosity about yeast cake appearance (not about infection :P)

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metasyntactic

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The yeast cake on my first batch was fairly uniform and soft, like so:

KucrL.jpg


My second two batches had a harder cake with lots of loose bits fallen down on to it, like so:

Oo6uk.jpg


I significantly improved my temperature control after my first batch by laying out some plywood down in my crawlspace for my brewery, where it stays between 16-17 Celsius (the first batch would have been at about 22).

Would anyone be so kind as to educate me on what my yeasties are doing? :)
 
cakes depend not only on temp, but the type of yeast. some yeasts form a "soft" cake, while others form a "hard" cake. fast flocculating yeasts normally look your 2nd pic. slow floc yeasts more like pic1
 
cakes depend not only on temp, but the type of yeast. some yeasts form a "soft" cake, while others form a "hard" cake. fast flocculating yeasts normally look your 2nd pic. slow floc yeasts more like pic1

All three were Danstar Nottingham Ale.
 
Differences in:
Temperature, even only a degree or two.
Age of the yeast.
Amount of break that went into the fermenter.
The crush of the grain.
The age of the extracts.
How well the yeast was pitched into the wort.
And others I cannot think of can cause the differences your pictures show. I use the same yeast for most of my ales and although most of my cakes look like photo #1 others look like phot #2 or any combination of the two.

bosco
 

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