Reusing Yeast Cake

I have a batch of Edwort's Haus Ale in the primary. I am planning on kegging and then brewing another identical batch on the same day. Can I just pour the new batch right into the carboy that I just emptied in a keg?

Somewhere I read to use a quart jar and not to pour directly onto the whole cake, because the excess trub will lead to off flavors.

Any help?

I would just reuse the yeast cake.

I don't recommend it. While the beer you'll be pitching has some bearing on the issue, knocking out onto a yeast cake is almost invariably overpitching. Overpitching has deleterious effects on the finished beer.

Better to harvest yeast so as to pitch the correct, measured amount of slurry, or simply pitch fresh yeast.

Bob

I have reused yeast cakes with delicious results. As long as it isn't a super low gravity beer or from a beer with excessive trub (tons of pellet additions), I don't think you'll have any issues.

I made three straight batches of Wheat beer on one vial of yeast and they all turned out great. 'Standard' hefe, dunkel weiss, then a blueberry. Most of my reading suggested that pitching on a trub more than twice was asking for trouble, so after the third batch, I tried a 'wash' and then saved some for future attempts.

The "west coast ale" yeast currently in primary will see a Pumpkin ale in a few days. It's a great way to stretch your yeast dollar, and if it goes bad, it's not the end of the world.

Good Luck.

As has been pointed out before, by reusing the whole yeast cake you will almost certainly be overpitching.

Some beer styles (most notably hefeweizens, but also some English styles and others) gain a lot of their flavour from compounds produced during the yeast growth phase. If you're concerned about this, you can figure out the appropriate pitching rate using this pitching rate calculator and just dump out the appropriate amount of the remaining yeast cake.

That said, I pour new wort onto a whole old yeast cake all the time and have never got anything but a good beer out of it

With a pale ale though, it should be ok, maybe less fruity.

Wouldn't wanna do this with a trappist though. Underpitching is prefered with those.