reusing yeast

planning on doing back to back batches of the same style... I currently have a batch in primary (5 days) that I want to pull a sample (wyeast 3944) and make a starter for my next batch. any reason why not? also, should I just take a sample like I would for a hydro reading? or top crop (krausen might have already fallen, I haven't looked), or try and get some of the trub off the bottom? I don't really want to rack yet, but I need to get a starter going tonight for saturday brew day.

actually, I might be ready to rack to keg by saturday, now thinking maybe just pitch on cake...

Would rinsing it first be a good idea? Clean out the bucket, get those dead cells and trub out and then pitch into a fresh bucket?

Just siphon the new batch on the cake. Be ready for vigorous fermentation!

smokey said:

Just siphon the new batch on the cake. Be ready for vigorous fermentation!

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I'm considering doing the same thing. I have two batches (from the same strain) brewed 1-week apart. I had a chance to get a little bottle of the first batch's yeast going a day or so to pitch on the second batch but I don't have any dry malt to get another yeast sample going.

The first batch get's bottled on Sunday. Second batch gets racked in the first carboy (after cleaning and sanitizing it). I only have two carboys right now (my other three are still at the old house - I'm relocating), and I figured to keep an inch or so of sediment from the second batch in the carboy and racking the newly brewed beer right onto it.

Will there be enough live yeast cells in that inch or so of sediment to get moving fairly quickly on fresh wort?

Note - I put a new batch right onto a yeast cake last night around midnight after transferring the other batch into secondary, got up this morning and it's blowing up into the airlock.

Going directly onto the entire yeast cake will result in overpitching and there are some downsides to doing this (there is an epic thread somewhere here on HBT about this; see if you can find it). To avoid this you can either wash your yeast or just pitch a cup or two of thick slurry as opposed to the entire cake.

Anyone ever tried dumping the yeast cake trub into a loosely sealed storage container at room temp overnight before pouring on top of the fresh wort batch the next day? I just did this today, I couldn't think of any reason it wouldn't work..I also added a bit of the cooled wort into the container, to act as a sort of starter.

turtle said:

Anyone ever tried dumping the yeast cake trub into a loosely sealed storage container at room temp overnight before pouring on top of the fresh wort batch the next day? I just did this today, I couldn't think of any reason it wouldn't work..I also added a bit of the cooled wort into the container, to act as a sort of starter.

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I've done this many times with good success. It's hard to judge how much yeast you're pitching, but I would usually use a pint to a quart of the cake depending on the size of the beer I was making. Also, I wouldn't reuse your yeast cake from anything bigger than a 1.050 beer. You wan't those little buggers as strong as possible.

I dumped in about half of it, hop trub and all. For some reason I didn't use the grain bag for my hops on my last batch It was awfully 'mucky'.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/why-not-pitch-your-yeast-cake-166221/

Read that post and discover how easy it can be to reuse yeast and then decide if you want to pitch on a yeast cake.

Sure.... now everyone comes out of the closet AFTER I pull the trigger. Where were you all when I originally asked the question?

:fro:

Blew the cap off of the airlock, another ceiling shot.

just to update... friday night I tested my batch that was in primary. fermentation looked complete at 1.010 but krausen had not fallen yet, so I wanted to wait to rack to keg. I made a starter from my hydro sample and a bunch of krausen material harvested from primary. Starter only had about 18 hours and was fully active when I pitched. I had a12 hour lag on fermentation, but now I am glad I put on a blowoff tube from the get go...