How long is a yeast cake good for in a carboy?

[daveyohill]

Doughed in!... "Brown Trout Pee - American Wicked Brown Ale"

7# Maris Otter
.75#Crystal 60L
.5# Special Roast
.5# Toasted Oats
.25# British Chocolate

Mashing as I type at 152degF. Hit the mash #s on the head. Will collect 6 gallons to boil down to 5. Hop schedule follows:

.75oz Magnum 60m
1oz Nugget at 15m
1.25oz Cascade at flame out

Irish Moss and Wyeast Nutrient at 15m

I'll "no chill" this till tomorrow morning and rack onto that S-05 yeast cake. I just checked out the episode of Basic Brewing video where they re-pitched a pumpkin ale wort onto a yeast cake from a robust porter for even more reassurance.

Woo Hoo!

 

[MVKTR2]

daveyohill, don't worry about sanitizing the bucket or lid, if your previous batch was clean, the fermenter is clean.

As for using all of the yeast cake vs removing part of it. It really depends on the situation. If you're pitching a large bier onto a yeast cake from a small bier, leave it all in. If you're repitching similar sized beers it's recommended by many that you remove some, even most of the yeast cake. This is particularly important if you're dealing with non-neutral yeast strains or styles where you desire flavor impact from the yeast such as estery english ales, Belgians, or anything a needed yeast character. Thus it's situational dependent as to wether you use all the cake or remove some/most.

As for aerating the wort. I'm of the opinion that oxygen in the wort is always a good thing... unless your wort has become bier ! Oxygenating the wort will not hurt the yeast and will give you a stronger more vigorous fermentation cycle. Boiled cooled wort has a dearth of oxygen, not a good thing for fermentation no matter the cell count. Besides, even in a neutral yeast some cell replication is a good thing.

Schlante,
Phillip

 

[cheezydemon3]

Absolutely you want air and cell production.

Remove some and pour the new wort in from 4 feet up, letting it get all frothy, and stirring up the cake.

 

[daveyohill]

YIKES! I racked onto that S-05 yeast cake at 11:30 this morning. I poured the wort through a strainer to catch the hops and break matter and then rocked the bucket a bit after the lid was on. It's 12:53 and we've got serious airlock activity! The airlock is one bubble after another. I put the fermentor in a large plastic "tote" and will loosely drape a trash bag over it to prepare for blowoff.

Man that took off!

 

[daveyohill]

Well I had to take some action with this fermentation. The ferm. temp. went from 70degF to 78degF within a couple hours. I set up the fermentor and tote in my bathtub and filled the tote with 62degF water to cool this thing down. Here's hoping it will level out around 65 - 68.

So what have I learned from this?

 

[cheezydemon3]

Are you serious?


Hopefully something HUGE.

 

[daveyohill]

Update... I left that fermentor in the water filled tote till around 9:00PM. The temp was steady at 65degF. I removed it from the water and this morning with ambient room temp at 62degF the beer is chugging along at 70degF.

This Brown's OG was 1.056 and was mashed at 150-152degF so I'm figuring with this rather fermentable wort and amounts of yeast and oxygen this beer should be done fermenting sometime around 10:00 this morning! Just kidding. But what do I know?

After watching that episode of Basic Brewing Video where they racked that mid gravity pumpkin ale onto the whole yeast cake from a robust porter I figured my similar gravity Brown would be just fine. Time will tell. Aside from that screaming kick off temp I think the whole experience is awesome. Next time I'll remove 50% of the yeast (wash/rinsing it), and prepare for fermentation temp control for the first 12-24 hours. Piece of cake..."yeast cake" that is! Thanks.

This beer will spend a couple weeks in primary then I'll bottle it up. I can't wait to taste this one.

 

[Blanda]

Great, I'm happy for you. I have a lot of fun when I try doing new/different things.
I hope you keep us informed next time as well.

Cheers.