Pitching slurry

I brewed a Wit on Jan 30th and I'm going to bottle tomorrow. I hadn't planned on letting it sit in the primary this long, but there have been yeast rafts/krausen still floating on the surface and it hasn't dropped. I haven't taken a gravity reading yet, that's tomorrow when I plan to bottle, but I also want to use the yeast for my next batch of a similar brew.

I have read that simply dumping a fresh 5 gallon batch of wort onto a yeast cake is more often than not way over pitching. I looked at Mr. Malty's calculator, but I have no idea how to estimate how many billion yeast cells/ml there are in the slurry.

Considering there hasn't been any visual activity or airlock activity in quite some time, the yeast should be fairly dense on the bottom. The fermenter hadn't moved until this evening when I put it on the island to bottle tomorrow. A lot of the yeast rafts and some of the funk from the krausen started dropping.

I've read to use a cup, various fractions of a cake, etc. Mr. Matly says 4 billion/ml tells me 64 ml of slurry, 3 billion/ml is 83 ml of slurry, and 2 billion is 127 ml. Any suggestions on how much slurry to use?

I just wash the slurry and re-pitch all of it. Had no problems with it this way.

The MrMalty calculator is meant to be used with washed yeast. By repitching without washing I would guess you would be at the low end of the thick/thin scale.

I haven't washed yeast before and I don't think my wife has the mason jars in the kitchen.

What's my best bet to bottle the beer on the yeast now and brew today or tomorrow with yeast from the cake?

Is pitching a liquid measuring cup of the cake sufficient?

Is there a method to do a hasty wash without all the jars?

When you have bottled, just swirl up the cake (add some water if you need to), and pour into a sanitized container, and cover. Airlock preferred, just don't completely seal.

This will keep for several weeks like this.

Use about a quarter of the cake for the next brew. No need to make a starter.

I poured 150 ml of boiled water into the slurry, swirled, then refilled the 150 ml jar, then added that to a 1 pint jar of booked water. I'll pitch the liquid tomorrow into the new batch of beer.

jtkratzer said:

I poured 150 ml of boiled water into the slurry, swirled, then refilled the 150 ml jar, then added that to a 1 pint jar of booked water. I'll pitch the liquid tomorrow into the new batch of beer.

Click to expand...

It wasn't boiling when you poured it in was it?

Haputanlas said:

It wasn't boiling when you poured it in was it?

Click to expand...

Wow, I'm sure someone's done that...it was cold.

There are many people who pour their wort right on to a previous batch's cake. Personally I think you'd be fine with however you are doing it.