Bottling the yeast cake

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Evfk

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This idea came to me after using bottle dregs to harvest a few batches of beer: rather than using a sanitized mason jar and a different process on bottling day, why not just reserve one bottle that is intended to be filled with the bottom of the barrel and have a lot of sediment with it? If you can harvest dregs from regular bottles I don't see why this method of cake-harvesting would be problematic, and presumably the cell count would be much higher than a normal harvest-from-dregs situation. Of course this doesn't save any time if you're kegging, but if you're bottling it would only be a few more seconds of work and would probably be a more reliable seal than in the case of a mason jar. The priming sugar would also help to feed the yeast a bit longer, and to create a bit of CO2 buffer until you wake it back up for the next batch.
Has anyone tried this? Anything in the way of troubleshooting that I've missed?
 
This sounds like a good idea, and I would try it, too. Hopefully we get some good insight from someone.
 
Most of the time when I reuse my yeast cake the yeast settles and sticks to the jar. I also find that pouring my clumpy yeast cake would be a pain to get into the bottle. I don't see what advantage you can gain in using beer bottles over mason jars or even sanitized plastic cups that a covered with foil. Maybe for long term storage as in months but then I would suspect the yeast health suffers.:mug:
 
I've saved parts of yeast cakes in bombers for the last 4-5 years successfully. Swirl up the cake with remaining beer and you should be able to pour through a sanitized funnel. Sanitary as your bottled beers and good for long term storage. I always use them to make a new starter before pitching.
Only issue I've had is that they can become over carbonated and gush when opening. I presume this is due to autolysis after many months rather than additional fermentation since they are refrigerated, have no priming sugar, and the ones out of the batch bottled with priming sugar aren't over carbonated.
 
I've saved parts of yeast cakes in bombers for the last 4-5 years successfully. Swirl up the cake with remaining beer and you should be able to pour through a sanitized funnel. Sanitary as your bottled beers and good for long term storage. I always use them to make a new starter before pitching.
Only issue I've had is that they can become over carbonated and gush when opening. I presume this is due to autolysis after many months rather than additional fermentation since they are refrigerated, have no priming sugar, and the ones out of the batch bottled with priming sugar aren't over carbonated.

I was just going to throw a warning out regarding carbonation issues. Some yeasts reactivate from the disturbance. Flocculated yeasts are now in solution (regardless of how little is in there. You may get buildup of CO2. If I could, I'd like to recommend a mason-like jar that is heat tempered. You can get them in all kinds of sizes (I like ones that are standardized to volumes), can be baked to sterilize (lid off and aluminium foil loose over the jar and lid), and if you leave the lid on loosely and cover the whole top with aluminium foil you can do away with funnels that could be potential contamination sites. I use wide mouth jars so pours are easy.
 
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