Question about putting a light extract brew onto a barleywine yeast cake?

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MDRex

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I have some old light malt extract sitting around that came with some equipment I bought. The kit is at elast a few years old. I was going to toss it, but figured I could at least try doing something with it. I have a barleywine that I will be racking to secondary and thought about putting this light brew onto the yeast cake from the BW. I have read that you should generally use a yeast cake for a similar beer, so my question is what will this type of yeast do to a much lighter brew?

I'm not aiming for any specific type of beer, just want to use the extract rather than toss it. I may even experiment with something like spice additions, tea, or souring.
 
It would be OK, the biggest problem would be a MASSIVE overpitch of yeast.

You should have taken some 2nd runnings from the grains for the BW and added the DME to that with some hops for a respectable brew.

I would dump most of the cake, boil the DME with some hops and have an APA.
 
I have't yet done this, so I can still make changes to my plans. My biggest goal is to do this without spending any more money. I just want to do it since I have it and can. Really, if it sucks it's no loss to me.

So I should just scoop out some of the yeast cake before putting the beer into the fermenter?
 
After some more reading I have decided to just wash the yeast and pitch into a clean fermenter. The few extra steps are worth the potential improvement in the beer.
 
You will need some hops too. At least 1 oz.

I have an American wheat beer kit that I'm using for another experiment that has 2 oz. of hops. My plan was to cut that kit back to 1 oz. anyway, so I'll just use the extra hops for this experiment. The only thing I'm going to pay for is a pount of some grain for steeping, just to give it a little more flavor and color. This whole brew will cost me about $2.
 
The experimental part of this comes in with the dregs I'm going use from a bottle of wild ale and tea addition. If it sucks it will have only cost me $2($10 max if you include the cost of the propane). If it turns out to be good, then that would be awesome. The time spent really isn't wasted, as it will be a learning experience either way.
 
Just use about a quarter of the cake. Don't spend time on washing it.
 
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