Pitch onto 4 month old ECY20 cake? OR pitch slurry?

[Wes440]

Hey everyone, quick query just to see all of your opinions out there on pitching sour beers....

I have a vial of ECY01 Bug Farm with a prep date of 1/10/2015, so I want to use this asap before the sacch strains are too tired.

I've also got a 6 gallon batch of ECY20 Bug County lambic that I brewed on 1/18/2015 that has not been opened and is still sitting on the cake. This is a first generation ECY20 beer.

Right, now here's my plan:

Rack the ECY20 Bug County beer into a secondary to age.

Brew up 11 gallons of light lambic wort tomorrow and split the batch between the ECY01 Bug Farm and pitch the remaining 5.5 gallons directly onto the ECY20 cake, no cleaning the carboy or anything.

My rationale is that I would like to capitalize on any sacch strains that are left in the ECY20 cake. I'm thinking that pitching right onto the cake might liven them back up, so that I can rack that beer off in 6 weeks or so, and THEN wash the ECY20 yeast.

My question is - Is there any reason to wash the ECY20 yeast first, and then pitch the slurry instead of pitching onto the cake?

Thoughts?



ECY20 lambic in the big mouth bubbler carboy:

 

[BGBC]

Sounds like a good plan. My only suggestion is that you probably only need about 1/4-1/2 of the cake from the ECY20 for the new batch.

Once you're done racking the beer, either keep racking some of the cake into a separate container or just dump some of it out.

 

[Coff]

Yea dont bother washing, just rack the beer and pour off the slurry into the next batch. I dont like pitching directly onto cakes though, youre way over pitching, just pitch a measured amount of slurry in a clean carboy.

 

[Wes440]

Thanks for the advice, I decided to gather the slurry from the first batch - I filled 3 pint jars with a nice thick slurry.
The first batch of ECY20 is already nicely sour after only 4 months! Funk is there too, and this is some funky stuff!

My brew day ended up being way more productive and longer than planned, I actually was able to stretch an extra 4 gallons due to a nice long mash and a very high efficiency, higher than I've ever been able to pull off. I was able to get three 5 gallon carboys filled, and pitched one with ECY01 Bug Farm, and the other two I split a pint of ECY20 slurry between them.

They haven't started krausen yet (it's been almost 36 hours), but each one has formed a thin pellicle.

I still have 2 full pint jars of slurry! Not sure when I'll find the time to use them, I've still got a Melange and ECY02 to use...
My sour and funky ales are starting to outnumber my clean ones!