Pitching on Yeast Cake Question

I did my first all grain (BIAB) batch yesterday, and I went all out with 15 gallons of Shoultz-Meyer Brewery Don't call me Hefe (~73% efficiency). I racked the wort into three separate carboys, and pitched each with a different yeast. What's brewing if not an experiment?

I made starters for both a Wyeast Bavarian Wheat (3056) strain and a Danstar Munich strain, but I decided to just use the yeast cake from a Rot Weiss for the third batch (recipe called for WL300, my RW was WL320). I figure it'll be quite different, but here's the thing; It didn't fire up as quickly as I expected.

I woke up this morning to a wild bubbling frenzy from both carboys that I made starters from, but was surprised to see that the yeast cake carboy was not active at all.

I've pitched onto a cake before, and it's usually pretty wild. I pored some of the cake off because it was beastly, but it was still sizable (over a liter by my estimation).

Here's my question. I was able to do my first controlled fermentation for the RW brew, and I cold crashed it. My auto-siphon met its untimely demise before I could rack the brew into a keg, and so I left it in the primary for an additional week at cold-crash temps. I allowed the cake to reach room temperatures, and sloshed it up pretty good when I pitched at ~84 deg F (damn warm tap water!). Do you think I'm just being impatient and I'll find it churning when I get home, or might I have damaged the yeast with the extended chill? (Considering I've washed yeast in the past, and kept the harvests refrigerated for weeks, that seems unlikely...).

I'd just be patient and chalk this one up to experience. I don't think anything is ruined but there just may be new characteristics for this yeast/wort/environment combination.

I've pitched on a yeast cake that has been cold crashed AND gelled and it went fine. Keep us up to date, though.

Would it have been better to do a quick wash and make a starter from the cake in this situation? I mean this from a hibernating yeast standpoint, not an over-pitch standpoint. I've read plenty about the downsides to reusing a yeast cake.

On another note, I went through two 10lb bags of ice (and a block of dry ice!) with my (admittedly small for a 15 gal batch) immersion chiller BEFORE passing it through my counter-flow chiller into my fermentation vessels. Even with all that I couldn't chill the volume down below 86. Texas ground loves its heat.

DrDarwin said:

Would it have been better to do a quick wash and make a starter from the cake in this situation?

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Yes.

DrDarwin said:

On another note, I went through two 10lb bags of ice (and a block of dry ice!) with my (admittedly small for a 15 gal batch) immersion chiller BEFORE passing it through my counter-flow chiller into my fermentation vessels. Even with all that I couldn't chill the volume down below 86. Texas ground loves its heat.

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I feel your pain. I do the same thing up here in IL, but can't get it down with the IC before the CFC. I just end up chilling it to proper pitching temp in my ferm. chamber, then pitching.

Ferm chamber... I was going to build one of those this weekend, but decided my mini-fridge didn't fit the bill. I'm scouring craigslist for a decent, carboy-abled fridge before I continue (for space restriction reasons). C'mon Dallas/FTW, let's sell some fridges.

It was active by the time I got home. I think the cold crash definitely put the yeast to sleep, and I didn't give them enough time or fuel to wake up. I think the next time I decide to reuse a cake, I'll dump most/all of it out and make a starter with a reasonable amount.