Reuse yeast first try

Well I tried to reuse my yeast from a previous batch. I racked one off primary and put new batch right on top of the old yeast bed 12 hours later and I got blow off really psyched.

updates to follow

Yep, there is a LOT of hungry yeast at the bottom of those primaries! 1" blow-off tubes are almost a necessity.

hmm, maybe I should try this with one of my brews? I presume it just needs to be a close relative in terms of beer style to work?

It works nicely if you follow a lighter beer with something similar that is a bit bigger/darker. For example, American Pale Ale then IPA, or Brown Ale then Porter, etc. It is also a really good way to ferment BIG bears, like I2PAs, Imperial stouts, etc.

The first was a light lager and the second was an experiment all the way around.
4# Amber LME
8oz pumpkin (from a can)
1.5# brown sugar
goldings (60 min)and Sasz (15min)
and dumped on Wyeast American Lager 2305

Quite a concoction

Seems like contamination would be hard to contain since you cannot re-steralize the fermenter that the yeast cake is in. Is this much of a problem when reusing yeast..?

I dumped all that yeast out when I washed up my primary from my first batch and was sad to see it wasted...

Well theoretically, since you have a sanitized vessel to begin with, fresh yeast, and fresh sanitary wort....as long as you don't open the thing all the time...you should still have a sanitary vessel. Even though you have lots of crud, it is not contaminated with potential infectious bugs. In reality I think the truth is more like this...you have a dominant strain of organism that is quite ready and able to push out anything in its path to establish itself. Once those yeast begin to feed and produce alcohol (the beer pH drops as well) this creates an even more harsh environment for infections. This process happens all the time and is sucessfully used in dry salami, cheese making and composting to name a few. So even though there are tons of things floating around on dust particles, etc etc the ones that do make it (unless strong enough) are usually not capable of establishing themselves and die off. Now the big problems that we usually see with infection come from bugs that hang around that are specifically designed to eat your wort, those are the ones that can cause problems because they can tolerate all that stuff (including hops). If these are left over from a brew date (say you didn't clean and sanitize) or stuck in a bottle that doesn't get sanitized then you can have problems. But coming from a primary that was just used to ferment in, there should be very little problem as long as you take care.

sounds right..

the only other problem ive found with pitching on the cake, is you end up with a MONSTER cake after the second batch, and you are pitching beer on to a cake with hops in it. This may change the flavor of the beer to some degree.

Ive pitched on to the cake before, but now I just make about a liter sized starter, let that go for two days, pitch half, and save half. Whenever I want to use that yeast again I just have to make a half litre batch of wort and add it to my yeast container.

You guys should learn to wash at least half of your yeast. It'll reduce that cake and allow you to have enough yeast on the side to make starters for another batch.

how do you clean the yeasties?

Dmay said:

Well I tried to reuse my yeast from a previous batch. I racked one off primary and put new batch right on top of the old yeast bed 12 hours later and I got blow off really psyched.

updates to follow

Click to expand...

I did this on my last batch. It was fermenting within 30 minutes and I actually lost almost 2 quarts of brew through the blow off tube.

How do you rig up a 1" blow off tube to accomodate the excessive fermentation? Sounds like a cheap way to go.

jmjbj_h said:

How do you rig up a 1" blow off tube to accomodate the excessive fermentation? Sounds like a cheap way to go.

Click to expand...

Yes, a 1" tube has an outside diameter of 1 1\4" and it fits tightly. I wasn't to happy about losing the wort.

Well I went down to check on it, the blow off tube was perkin a litle bit so I wanted to take a sniff and see how it smelled, so I got nice and close as I cracked the stopper just a little bit and the thing blew off in my hand got wort, hops yeast slury all over myself face eyes ceiling walls ect. I tried to plug back up and it just kept foaming but It did smell pretty good. That yeast was cooking like wild fire.