Tell me I'm dumb (Repitching on yeast cakes)

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jordanfrenzy

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So I've just done my first bulk order of hops from Nikobrew. My plan is to first brew the great Zombie Dust clone by skeezerpleezer, then pouring Yooper's DFH60 on top of the yeast cake (I plan on using WLP002 as a sub for Wyeast 1968 -- but both second brews use Pacman and I willl use this if the LHBS has it). My reasoning for this is the Zombie Dust clone has a slighty lower OG than the DFH clone. On top of all of this no doubt foolish cheapness, I have the ingredients to do Yooper's Rogue Dead Guy clone as well. I thought I would be super cheap and re-use the yeast cake a third time. The biggest problems I see is that the Dead Guy will be overpitched a good bit and I should have a fair amount of dead yeast by this point.

Is the whole endeavor a stupid cheap move to try to save a couple of bucks or do you think I can make some generally pretty good brews with this strategy?
 
This is something I have been wondering myself, time to sit back and wait. :)
 
Hope it works out for you!

I've read the above thread, but still wanted to try out the repitching method ever since I heard about it. For what jt's worth, yesterday I put a newly brewed mild (OG 1.038) on a cake of WLP007 that fermented a batch of Northern Brewer's Surly Bitter Brewer (OG 1.040). Proponents of the method say that there should be a short lag time, etc, but at about 20hrs there's just the barest hint of krausen. I'm used to much faster and more vigorous fermentations with just a starter, but hopefully it'll work out in the end.
 
jordanfrenzy said:
Is the whole endeavor a stupid cheap move to try to save a couple of bucks or do you think I can make some generally pretty good brews with this strategy?

What economy? For the same price (free) you can harvest the yeast From the zombie dust and pitch proper rates into dead guy and DFH. Plus maybe 2 more beers, all using 2nd generation yeast.
 
Yeah, I would just pour the slurry into ball jars so you can measure it and pitch the proper amount. Not that much more work and reduces the chance of off favors from over pitching.
 
I rinse out roughly 3/4 of a cake and pitch cooled wort on that. Works fantastically.

A whole cake is overpitching.
 
You're dumb.

Happy? :)

Zombie Dust can be made with S-04 and DFH 60 uses US-05. You can easily make them with multiple packets of each rehydrated and be done with it. Won't cost much more either.

If you're stuck on 1068 or Pacman, I'd recommend at minimum washing it.
 
1.) Don't pitch onto a yeast cake. Overpitching into a dirty carboy? No thanks.

2.) Even if you want to reuse the yeast, I would not re-use yeast from a hoppy beer. Hop oils are quite detrimental to cell wall health.
 
Do it. See if you like it. I really don't think you will make a bad beer doing it. It might not be the best it could be but if you can't tell the difference and it saves you time then it sounds like a positive.
 
What are the volumes and gravities of the beer? The number of cells produced can be calculated with the Balling observation so you can pitch the correct amount of the cake. Don't worry about the dead cell count unless you are pitching on the entire cake. That would be a mistake.
 
Don't any dead yeast get consumed during fermentation? Isn't yeast nutrient often made up of dead yeast cells?

How much do you think you have to overpitch to actually affect beer flavor in a negative way. It's not like the beer style he is making get much of their flavor from the yeast anyway.
 
Split the cake into 4ths (swirl it to evenly combine it first) in mason jars. Use one mason jar per 5g batch. That's close enough that you shouldn't have any issues. It's way more cells than a vial of yeast and is probably slightly overpitching in most beers but not by much.
 
Don't any dead yeast get consumed during fermentation? Isn't yeast nutrient often made up of dead yeast cells?

How much do you think you have to overpitch to actually affect beer flavor in a negative way. It's not like the beer style he is making get much of their flavor from the yeast anyway.

Some dead cells get consumed, not all. If the cells lyce when they die then it can add some pretty bad flavor to the beer. If you pitch on an entire cake you will typically be over pitching by a factor of ten. That would be tasteable.
 
Plenty of people (including me) have pitched onto an unwashed yeast cake and made good beer. Its probably best to follow all the rules but I think it's good to try it and see how it goes. It seems like most people who pitch straight onto the cake like the results and the only major complaint is excessive blowoff from an intense fermentation.
 
Plenty of people (including me) have pitched onto an unwashed yeast cake and made good beer. Its probably best to follow all the rules but I think it's good to try it and see how it goes. It seems like most people who pitch straight onto the cake like the results and the only major complaint is excessive blowoff from an intense fermentation.

Over pitching can make good beer, but will rarely make great beer. In my experience has drasticly changes the flavor of my beer. See here for the story:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/11/counting-cells.html
 
I don't think anyone will notice if you are off by a factor of 2. You might see some strange things like over or under attenuation by a few points, and flavors that are just not quite where you wanted them.

But it's still a good idea to be as accurate as you can be. Packages of yeast can varry from 75-150 billion. The calculators are commonly off by fair amount. And estimating by slurry volume can easily have and error factor of two.
 
I don't think anyone will notice if you are off by a factor of 2. You might see some strange things like over or under attenuation by a few points, and flavors that are just not quite where you wanted them.

But it's still a good idea to be as accurate as you can be. Packages of yeast can varry from 75-150 billion. The calculators are commonly off by fair amount. And estimating by slurry volume can easily have and error factor of two.

Right, which is why I asked! :) Even if I *think* I'm being accurate, I probably am not!
 
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