Reusing Cake Question

So, I made a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale 'Clone' which will turn out to not be a clone, but just good beer. It went into the primary at about 1.074. I was planning on racking a Denny Conn Bourbon Vanilla Porter onto it (US-05). But that SNPA clone will probably end up at 7% abv, and the Porter will be 8%. Will the yeast be too stressed from alcohol to finish out the Porter. I don't want it to get stuck.

7% maybe a little high for straight reusing the cake. You could always wash the yeast and make a big starter.

Why use stressed yeast if you don't have to. US-05 dry yeast is cheap -- go pick up another packet!

I certainly keep at least one spare each of US-05 and S-04 in my fridge. I'll just rehydrate and pitch a fresh pack of the beasties as usual. They have treated me well thus far and I trust them.

1.074 shouldent of streesed us05 out. i would reuse the cake, itll be fine, plus you can never really overpitch

bkov said:

1.074 shouldent of streesed us05 out. i would reuse the cake, itll be fine, plus you can never really overpitch

Click to expand...

Most published experts (e.g., John Palmer, Jamil, etc.) suggest this is wrong on both accounts. Different authors put the top gravity for reusing at different places, but most put the max at 1.050 to 1.060. Also, there are certainly flavor consequences to having some yeast reproduction which doesn't happen if you overpitch. There is good reason why the major brewers (craft & BMC) don't constantly repitch yeast from full batches onto new full batches.

Luckily, the consequences for both of these will not always change the flavor dramatically, but I personally suspect you'll be able to taste it.

i know jamil said in the brewcast on yeast, that even though people say you can overpitch, you never really can homebrewing

I'm sure that you CAN, but you'd probably have to intend on overpitching just to see if you could.

Talloak said:

So, I made a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale 'Clone' which will turn out to not be a clone, but just good beer. It went into the primary at about 1.074. I was planning on racking a Denny Conn Bourbon Vanilla Porter onto it (US-05). But that SNPA clone will probably end up at 7% abv, and the Porter will be 8%. Will the yeast be too stressed from alcohol to finish out the Porter. I don't want it to get stuck.

Click to expand...

The yeast will be fine, but at 8% ABV Porter, so with higher OG I would use 100% of the cake, as opposed to a lower gravity Pale Ale, where I would use about 1/3 or 1/2 of the cake.

Not getting into the use a yeast cake or not debate, the one thing I can say from personal experience, if you pitch a non-hoppy beer on to the yeast cake from a hoppy beer you WILL get hop transfer. We were misinformed regarding this and dropped a stout on top of a yeast cake from an IPA. Result was basically a black IPA. So, depending on how hoppy you want your Porter you may want to think about that.

KellyK said:

the one thing I can say from personal experience, if you pitch a non-hoppy beer on to the yeast cake from a hoppy beer you WILL get hop transfer.

Click to expand...

Agree 100%.