Toss hefeweize onto cake of old hefe, how long can I let wort sit before pitching?

Im gonna brew the Bee Cave Hefe this weekend. I am going to brew another hefe next weekend. Since the Bee Cave hefe calls for 10 days of primary, can I let NEXT weekends hefe sit for a few days until my Bee Cave hefe ferments out and I can transfer it? I would like to be able to toss NEXT weekends hefe right onto the yeast cake of this weekends, but will need to let sit for a couple days...

Also, is there any other issue with me brewing a hefe by recycling me yeast cake? I know that Hefes are all about the yeast, so im not sure if that will harm the recipe at all...

Thanks guys.

I probably would not let it sit more than a few hours unless I could store it in a keg to keep oxygen off of it. I believe thats going to be the biggest concern since its already been boiled.

-bn

Just be real clean and leaving it for a whole day shouldn't hurt. People do this alot with lagers.. it usually takes that long to cool it down to actual fermentation temperatures before pitching.
So in your case I can't see how a day would hurt... 2 days probably wouldn't either but I would avoid it, personally (without having a good reason why).

Oh and by the way the viability of your hefe yeast is very short lived. After a week its lost a good deal of its spunk, but if you are using the whole cake it may not be a problem. I always worry about over-pitching so I don't use cakes myself. Never re-used hefe yeast.

Anyway good luck and Cheers!

Ok, how about this, what if I just transfered the hefe into a secondary after 7 days (assuming it is not bubbling), and then tossed my new hefe on the cake. That would eliminate the need to let the wort sit for a couple days before tossing it on the new cake.

Would I lose my yeasty goodness? Or like you said, is a hefe not the right type of beer to recycle the yeast? And whith that said, could I bank a hefe yeast with glycerin like I have with other yeasts?

No need to secondary your hefe. If it's done fermenting after 7 days just bottle it straight away.

As for pitching onto the old yeast cake, I wouldn't suggest pouring your wort onto a whole old yeast cake.
A lot of the hefe-ish flavours are produced by the yeast during the growth phase, so under-pitching is preferred to over-pitching for a hefe.

When I reused my hefe yeast recently I just swirled around the trub at the bottom of the fermenter and poured out 80-90% of it and this worked just fine. If you were feeling a bit more ambitious you could wash some of the yeast and make sure you were getting just the right amount.

Good luck and enjoy your beer

If you make sure to pitch a propoer ammount of yeast (read: starter) it should be close enough to finishing by day 7 anyway (at least my last hefe was, but i let it sit for an extra 7 days). If you also have good temp control there's no reason to let it go any longer than need be....

Ya, I used a starter. I pitched at about 7pm last night, and because Im so good at this, I didnt use a blow off. Well, at 7am this morning, i heard a hissing from the basement, and sure enough, I had nasty yeast snot all over the side of my fermentor. It blew the top of the airlock off and dribbled all over. It is only 66 degrees down there, but the carboy was at 77. I placed it in a tub with cold water to help bring it down a bit. Im sure it will be at 68 by tomorrow.

So, if it is done fermenting by saturday, I will lose some of the yeast, and use that to pitch onto my new hefe (which Im thinking about the honey orange hefe on the recipe board).

So, is a hefe yeast good to bank with glycerine?

If you love hefe's there was a great discussion over here that I learned a lot from. The consensus seems to be that ferment temp has ALOT to do with flavor balance. Perhaps more than underpitching, though many still do that.

My first was made off a variation of the listed recipe (doing a schneider weiss with vienna malt). I did underpitch (one tube of WL380 into 5 gal). I pitched at 55 degrees and let the wort temp rise to 62 degrees (in a son of fermentation chiller type deal). I am gurgling away.

I am planning on pitching bigger on the same recipe for the next batch to see how it effects the flavor profile. There are several who have gone this route who say single tube (underpitch) and starter yielded the same flavor results.

With the experience of these guys, I would saydo not pitch on a full yeast cake and control the ferment temps, most using low to mid 60s for the wort temp during ferment.

Hey, thanks. I appreciate the help guys.

If its still in high krausen, you should consider top-cropping for re-use rather than washing and repitching. It's a very good yeast for that, and you'll probably have alot better viability the second time around.

Nope, missed it... It has pretty much fermented all out in 3 days... No bubbles at all this morning.

Budzu said:

If its still in high krausen, you should consider top-cropping for re-use rather than washing and repitching. It's a very good yeast for that, and you'll probably have alot better viability the second time around.

Click to expand...

Just what I was going to say!

If you're using a glass carboy, you just need a tool to pull off the nice, thick white foam from the top. An auto-siphon perhaps, or a long turkey baster?

Make a starter with that and pitch away.


EDIT: Oh. Too bad.

Can you pull a sample of wort/beer off near the bottom and culture that up?

I let a yeast cake sit in a empty carboy (with stopper and airlock) for about 3 days. Pitched new wort right on top of that, and it produced a nearly identical hefe.

Might be playing with fire, there, but hey, RDWHAHB!

Wyeast 3068 was the yeast.

Griffsta said:

Im gonna brew the Bee Cave Hefe this weekend. I am going to brew another hefe next weekend. Since the Bee Cave hefe calls for 10 days of primary, can I let NEXT weekends hefe sit for a few days until my Bee Cave hefe ferments out and I can transfer it? I would like to be able to toss NEXT weekends hefe right onto the yeast cake of this weekends, but will need to let sit for a couple days...

Also, is there any other issue with me brewing a hefe by recycling me yeast cake? I know that Hefes are all about the yeast, so im not sure if that will harm the recipe at all...

Thanks guys.

Click to expand...

So, are you the guy that got the last hefe yeast vile from South Hills Brewing?

Yes, i am the guy that got the last hefe yeast from South Hills Brewing. I actually had to call and have him set it aside for me. He said that he was getting more soon. Sorry. Check back with him today, or head down to triangle down in the strip.

Griffsta said:

Yes, i am the guy that got the last hefe yeast from South Hills Brewing. I actually had to call and have him set it aside for me. He said that he was getting more soon. Sorry. Check back with him today, or head down to triangle down in the strip.

Click to expand...

Triangle is like going to my favorite junk yard (no pun intended):cross:..... you never know what kind of stuff he is gonna have that nobody else does.