Second round on WLP802 thoughts and ideas.

[jmfitzgerald]

so a couple weeks ago i brewed a traditional Czech Pilsner with WLP802. it's now in the lagering phase, and i'm starting to think of ideas of what to do with this healthy yeast cake of WLP802 and have a couple questions.

-first off, i've never really pitched new fresh wort onto a healthy yeast cake. does this work the same with lagers and ales? if i plan on brewing a new beer/wort the day before, chill it down to lager pitching temps (48ish) overnight, then the next day when i rack the Czech Pilsner off, can i just add the new wort right in, aerate with O2, and i should off to the races again with round 2? anything i should be aware of, or is it simple beer out, wort in?

-recipe ideas. i'm still toying with what route to go with on this second generation of 802. right now, my main thoughts are an Schwartzbier, an IPL or a BIPL (kind of a riff off wookey jack (and all time favorite) but with 802 yeast). i'm open to ideas to sway me one way or an other if you've had any other outside of the box uses with 802.

-water profiles. so to do the Czech Pils, i built it up from 100% RO and kept it VERY soft, pretty much mimic'n Pilsen's profile. for any of these new recipes, if i wanted hops to come out more, i'm assuming to adjust my water profile more to a standard hoppy profile??? or talk about really mix mash styles and ingredients maybe trying a NE water profile, with this dry 802, and lots of hops. interesting.

just looking for any info and ideas so i can start recipe formulating and be ready to put new wort in this very healthy cake of 802.

 

[giraffe]

You generally dont want to pitch on an entire yeast cake, use a calculator such as mr malty for an about of harvested slurry, and make a rough guesstimate of what that would look like in the primary, and spill out the rest of the cake. It will probably end up you need 1/3rd the cake for lagers or 1/6th for ales, but it depends on how big your cake was in the first place. It is harder to over pitch a lager, but I still wouldnt use a whole cake; when ive grossly overpitched in the past, I have gotten acetylaldehyde problems. Try to keep it in the ballpark.

Czech amber and dark lagers are another option, you dont see they everyday.

As far as water chemistry, yes, in general youd add more sulfate proportionally, but the czech yeasts dont seem to ferment as clean with a ton of calcium in the water. Id keep the calcium to no more than 50ppm, -- you arent going to get some 300ppm of sulfate like you do in some ipas

 

[jmfitzgerald]

perfect! thanks for the heads up. that makes sence, as i've washed a couple batches of ale yeast in the past and i usually get about 5 mason jars of yeast slurry out of one carboy, so this all kinda lines up.

 

[giraffe]

n/m