Pitching onto yeast cake

I can't find anyone that agrees on this subject. Can you make a beer, put beer into bottling bucket, and then add new wort to the yeast cake? What is the best way to do this. Do you mix up the yeast? Etc

It's pretty flexible when it comes to method... as long as you're sanitary about it you'll be fine. I've just poured new wort right onto a yeast cake a couple times - made great beer too

DurangoMatt said:

I can't find anyone that agrees on this subject.

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Welcome to homebrewing.

An entire yeast cake would be overpitching and, therefore, is not best practice. Generally speaking, you only need about 1/4 of the cake for a proper pitch rate. Mrmalty.com has a nice calculator for figuring out how much you really need. Now, having said all the above, I've pitched directly on an entire yeast cake a couple of times and both turned out fine, but knowing what I do now, I don't think I'd do that again, as I know it's not good practice to do so.

Pitch on the entire cake. If the beer tastes good to you, tell the internet about the benefits of pitching on a cake.

LLBeanJ said:

An entire yeast cake would be overpitching and, therefore, is not best practice.

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And like a lot of things homebrew verses craft brew...The odds we will actually overpitch with active live cells is pretty low. Not a myth, just overly hyped.

The following is a list of professional breweries that pitch on a cake..............

Onkel_Udo said:

And like a lot of things homebrew verses craft brew...The odds we will actually overpitch with active live cells is pretty low. Not a myth, just overly hyped.

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No, I'm pretty sure it would be overpitching. By a large margin. The real question is: How detrimental is overpitching to your beer?

LLBeanJ said:

No, I'm pretty sure it would be overpitching. By a large margin. The real question is: How detrimental is overpitching to your beer?

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It depends on the type of yeast. Neutral flavored yeasts are more tolerant to over pitching without undesirable results. Sure, you can pitch on a cake of s05 and it will probably be fine. I dare you to pitch on a full cake of T58.

Basically what it boils down to is this:

How important is saving $3-$7 on a 5 gallon batch of beer to you? This equates to a potential savings of 6-14 cents per beer. If this savings is worth the risk of losing 5 gallons of homebrew, go for it. You will probably make a good beer.

Randy_Bugger said:

If this savings is worth the risk of losing 5 gallons of homebrew, go for it. You will probably make a good beer.

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I am sure it is possible to "lose" a batch do to overpitching but has anyone actually had this happen? I really am curious, not being snarky.

Onkel_Udo said:

I am sure it is possible to "lose" a batch do to overpitching but has anyone actually had this happen? I really am curious, not being snarky.

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Yes. I have dumped wort on a cake of t58 and the result was too much yeast character. I drank half the batch and dumped the rest.

Yeast do lots of stuff in their journey. Just like the rest of life you can't have too little or too much, you're looking for balance. What kind of yeast cake is it? Less than 5%abv in a 5 gallon batch? Why wouldn't you take 2/3rd of that slurry and keep in in jars in the fridge for the next brew and pitch on the last 1/3rd? These are some of the questions that you can seek answers for and each one is very debatable.

I have pitched directly onto a yeast cake for a Barley wine and it turned out great. Having said that, there is probably some risk involved. You could over pitch or have an infection and pass it to a second batch. You want to make sure you pitch onto similar styles of beer. English Mild to Pale Ale or IPA would be fine, but you don't want to stray too much. You probably want to avoid going from a really hoppy beer to something like an English Mild.

I am thinking about making a 2nd 5gal of Kolsch from the Cake.

DurangoMatt said:

I am thinking about making a 2nd 5gal of Kolsch from the Cake.

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Remove 2/3 of the cake and pitch the wort. Your worst case scenario is two batches of infected beer, but it will probably be fine.

LLBeanJ said:

An entire yeast cake would be overpitching and, therefore, is not best practice. Generally speaking, you only need about 1/4 of the cake for a proper pitch rate.

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I scoop out 1/2 of a sanitized pickle jar and let that sit for about an hour while I bottle. I then pour off the good yeast from the top into another sanitized jar. You only need about 100ml of healthy slurry. Store it in the fridge until brew day, which is usually the next day.