Pitching onto lambic yeast cake for primary?

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soontobepcv

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About to bottle my first sour beer that was made with a standard belgian yeast for the primary and Wyeast's 3728 blend for the secondary. I'm tempted now to just rack the new wort directly onto the cake in the carboy, but can find surprisingly little info about this... any ideas? The first beer is quite tasty after a year (tart, funky, no presence of vinegar tho)
 
I have heard people say it can get too sour with repitching blends like that due to the different growth rates of the organisms. I have never tried it though and if you do be sure to report back and let us know. If I were you I would email Wyeast about it, they are quick to respond and have always been very helpful to me.
 
i repitch onto my sour yeast cakes all the time

I prefer a very sour funky beer, so subsequent pitching help me to achieve what I want in a beer, and in fact with roeselare the beer doesnt really get good until the 3rd or 4th repitch

Go for it, but the beer will be much more sour than the previous, anything that gets bugs in the primary will be substantially more sour than secondary souring but in my opinion thats the only way to go

Oh, I wouldnt suggest using the whole cake though, swirl it up and dump half or so
 
You can always blend the beer back "down" if it ends up too sour for your tastes (hard to blend "up" for more sourness though) ;)
 
Good to know this info, I am planning on doing this next week!
 
You could always collect a small amount of slurry, clean the fermenter, pitch standard yeast, then introduce the slurry in a week.

I'm really curious to see what happens when pitching directly onto that yeast cake. If only those sources that said to use regular yeast for primary had said *why* then I'd be less inclined to do this, but...
 
So when you say that the second batch from the old cake will be sour, is it acetic-y sour or lactic-y sour? Id like to minimize the vinegar.
 
This thread is over 8 years old. That being said, from my experience pitching on the yeast cake of a mixed culture like bug farm, will produce a more sour beer quicker than the original pitch. It will produce lactic acid faster, not acetic.
 
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