Wash yeast or no?

So I'm using some 3191PC yeast in a berliner weiss right now and the plan is to pitch a Gose on the cake. I got a lot of break material and trub in the BW so I'd really like to wash the yeast to clean it up a bit for the gose. I just wonder how well this would work with yeast/lacto/brett and whatever else is in there. It may not separate out well and I may lose some of the good stuff trying to get rid of the bad.

Would I be better off just pitching onto the cake and letting it go and dealing with the trub?

I would just pitch on top of it.

I might pitch on the cake if I was feeling a bit lazy, but the best thing to do is to wash it. Especially if you have a "lot" of break material.

Too many cardnals fans in this thread.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

Too many cardnals fans in this thread.

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Ha. You a Rangers fan or somethin'?

How sour is the Berliner?

In re-using the yeast you can expect it to be even less sour.

The original yeast pack was predominately Lacto, with a little yeast, allowing the lacto to try and do some souring before the yeast starts up. Your cake now is predominately sacc yeast, and the lacto will have little to no chance of getting ahead of it.

I'd do a sour mash of some sort to start, boil, and then pitch onto the cake. That way you will get some souring to start, use an acid tolerant yeast to ferment and have some lacto to continue slowly developing in the bottle.

Calder said:

In re-using the yeast you can expect it to be even less sour.

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This is the first time I've heard someone say this, usually it is the opposite. Do you have personal experience with this we can learn from?

AmandaK said:

This is the first time I've heard someone say this, usually it is the opposite. Do you have personal experience with this we can learn from?

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This makes sense to me if using the Berliner white labs culture. There is 10% sacc in there, so it stands to reason that by reusing the same yeast/bug cake that the ratio of sacc/lacto has been thrown off. With more sacc the bugs won't get as big of a head start as they would with the original blend.

Using something like the wyeast lambic blend - it makes sense that the lacto, pedio and Brett have been increased and the sacc has died off, which would make it more sour.

Not first hand experience, but it makes sense to me.

AmandaK said:

This is the first time I've heard someone say this, usually it is the opposite. Do you have personal experience with this we can learn from?

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See response from CC below. The lacto/yeast balance in a quickly fermented Berliner is different than an extended fermentation with Lambic style beers.

cadillacandy said:

This makes sense to me if using the Berliner white labs culture. There is 10% sacc in there, so it stands to reason that by reusing the same yeast/bug cake that the ratio of sacc/lacto has been thrown off. With more sacc the bugs won't get as big of a head start as they would with the original blend.

Using something like the wyeast lambic blend - it makes sense that the lacto, pedio and Brett have been increased and the sacc has died off, which would make it more sour.

Click to expand...

Calder said:

See response from CC below. The lacto/yeast balance in a quickly fermented Berliner is different than an extended fermentation with Lambic style beers.

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Good point. Thanks for the insight!

Well, I'm not using the white labs blend, it was the Wyeast 3191PC blend. It does have some sacc. I also pitched pure lacto and let it sit for a week with just that and then I went with the 3191. It's been going for 3 weeks now and was at 1.010 when I checked it the other day.

I have no issues washing this yeast but I'd be afraid of losing lacto and brett in the process.

Also, I still have no pellicle or anything - should I expect to see one with this blend? It's still very cloudy as well, will it drop clear before I keg?

It is my plan to do a sour mash for the Gose so that should help things. Prolly at least a 20% sour mash and the mash will have a good bit of acid malt. I'm going to try to wash the yeast as best I can. Worst case scenario the sacc ferments the beer more than the bugs but the sour mash should help that out.