Do you pitch on previous beer's yeast cake?

I know this has probably been discussed before. I just want to get an idea how many here pitch onto a previous beer's yeast cake, mucked up fermenter with no yeast washing. What are your results?

redalert said:

I know this has probably been discussed before. I just want to get an idea how many here pitch onto a previous beer's yeast cake, mucked up fermenter with no yeast washing. What are your results?

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I've done 2 consecutive batches of german hefe where the second batch was pitched right onto the first batch's cake. Second one dried out a bit more, but was probably the better of the 2!

It's also a great way to start a barleywine or other very large beer.

I do it all the time for lagers - brew a 2 gallon batch of Pilsner or Helles as a "starter", then rack the 5.5 gallon batch onto its yeast cake.

If the beers are the same volume and you pitch the entire cake, it will be something like 2-5 times the normal amount of yeast, depending on gravity. So I would definitely expect flavor changes as a result. A better/more consistent procedure might be to remove ~2/3 of the yeast cake using something like a sanitized ladle, then rack the second beer in.

(I know this sounds bad)...I've dumped on my yeast cake before...

Now I just take 2-3 cups of slurry out and use that.

I have a conical, and I collected about a cup of thick yeast sludge (S-04 compacts tight) and dumped it in a new batch of beer, and man-o-man did it ferment fast. By the way...both batches are yummy!

I usually get three batches out of a vial of yeast, re-pitching on the cake. I try to plan a sequence like bitter, ESB, IPA or Pils, Oktoberfest, Bock.

I do it a few times a year when I plan on using the same yeast for successive batches. I think I have done it on the same cake up to 4 times. I was not going for a record, the beers I were making all benefited from the same yeast. Needless to say, I tend to reuse American and British Ale yeasts, but not so much on the Belgian or other specialty yeasts.

There should be taste differences, but I can't tell. Same with aerating. I can't tell the differences in my beer, but research proves out that there are some (perhaps many).

homebrewer_99 said:

(I know this sounds bad)...I've dumped on my yeast cake before...

Now I just take 2-3 cups of slurry out and use that.

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Same here. I just scoup out a big coffee cup full and that's plenty. Using the whole yeast cake leaves you with too much trub.