Yeast cake pitching

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Schwind

Schwind

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I know this has been covered before, and I have searched and read as much as my brain can handle; however, I still have a question.

I'm brewing a Barleywine this weekend and my expected starting gravity is 1.107. I'm planning on pitching this on top of the us-05 cake from my IPA which was 1.068 and finished at 1.013 making it around 7.2% ABV. Are my yeast to stressed from the alcohol to ferment another big beer or are they primed and ready to go?

Also, can I pour 4.5 gallons of barleywine wort on top of the cake and keep it in the bucket without a blowoff tube or should I ferment this in a 6 gal carboy with a blow off tube? I don't have a 6 gal carboy but have wanted to buy one so I can watch fermentation instead of bubbles, but if I can get by without it, I can always postpone the purchase.

Thanks,
Mike
 
This yeast may be perfect to chew through all that new sugar...But have some more O5 or Champagne yeast on hand just incase it tires out in a week or so..

and you are dumping barleywine on an excited cake??? BIG CARBOY AND BIG BLOWOFF TUBE!!!!!! AND if you can hook a webcam up and point it at the fermenter and sign up for a mogulus account to webcast it you will have a lot of viewers...this could be quite an exciting brew to watch.

volcano%20eruption.jpg


:mug:
 
Schwind said:
I know this has been covered before, and I have searched and read as much as my brain can handle; however, I still have a question.

I'm brewing a Barleywine this weekend and my expected starting gravity is 1.107. I'm planning on pitching this on top of the us-05 cake from my IPA which was 1.068 and finished at 1.013 making it around 7.2% ABV. Are my yeast to stressed from the alcohol to ferment another big beer or are they primed and ready to go?

Also, can I pour 4.5 gallons of barleywine wort on top of the cake and keep it in the bucket without a blowoff tube or should I ferment this in a 6 gal carboy with a blow off tube? I don't have a 6 gal carboy but have wanted to buy one so I can watch fermentation instead of bubbles, but if I can get by without it, I can always postpone the purchase.

Thanks,
Mike
Click to expand...

If you listen to Jamil, he preaches that if using a yeast cake, a hoppy beer is a bad choice for that yeast cake because the hop resins, in the same way that they stop bacterial growth, will coat the yeast cells and reduce viability. It may still work well, but generally a 1040 or 1050 beer with less hops may be a better choice for reusing a cake.
 
I currently don't have a 40-50 beer in primary, and my IPA is my only choice. It did have 4.5 oz of hops per 5 gallon batch, but hopefully taht won't be too much for the yeast. The yeast did ferment out to 80% attenuation so they can't be that sluggish.

Revvy, I have no webcam, but always have us-05 on hand. Either way this should be fun. I've never pitched onto a cake before. Looks like I'm buying a bigger carboy.

Thanks,

Mike
 
I wouldn't worry about the hop presence in this mofo, it will be buried in the barleywine...we're not talking about pitching a mild onto the ipa..I think this will be just fine.
 
Done and done, I'll take a pic of day one fermentation as long my carboy doesn't blow up.

Thanks,
Mike
 
Revvy said:
I wouldn't worry about the hop presence in this mofo, it will be buried in the barleywine...we're not talking about pitching a mild onto the ipa..I think this will be just fine.
Click to expand...

It is not the hop presence you are worried about as in taste, it is the oils that have coated the yeast cells making them less viable.

You could just rack the beer off into secondary, then dump the yeast and trub into a jar and give it a couple washes. Not only would it be good to get rid of the trub but it will also make the yeast more viable. When you are done you could even give it a little 1.040 wort to get it all revved up again and pitch even more yeast and high krausen.
 
I've got 2 buckets to choose from so if washing becomes a pain in the ass I'll just pitch onto the unwashed one.

I had no idea that hops effected yeast like that. Steelerguy, thanks for the tip on washing what i got.

Mike
 

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