Yeast cake composition?

[meat803]

Wyeast Northwest Ale 1332
Taken from AG brown ale primary after 4 weeks 65-68F
FG 1.011 High from what I am used to, but 1st time using this strain.
I got a little greedy and siphoned off some of the top of the cake.
I filter my wort when it enters primary so I have no hops and minute amounts of break.



From my experience when you wash yeast, your layers come quickly. Hops on bottom, then darker dead yeast.

This last time I got no stratification for like 8 hours. All that settled looked the same. Shook it up and same. Then I cold crashed it and now I have a nice dense cake but it is all the same color.

So my questions are -

What is the % of dead to live yeast typically?
Is this cake viable?

 

[Suthrncomfrt1884]

In a typical yeast bed...you should have around 25% dead yeast, 50% healthy mother cells (have started to reproduce), and 25% unbudded virgin cells. Now...breaking down the mother cells into what is 100% usable is a little harder to do. I would just assume that about 50% of the mother cells are healthy and the other 50% are on their way downhill.

So...if you figure that 50-60% of your yeast is good, you should be fine.