Pitching slurry to high gravity beers

[byronyasgur]

On this Brewers Friend page they say

Ways of achieving a higher yeast pitching rate:

...

C) Re-pitch slurry from a previous batch. This should only be done under ideal circumstances (healthy fermentation, within 7-10 days, correct temperature range, beer below 6.5% ABV etc).

I presume this means yeast harvested from beer below 6.5% ABV but it could be read that we shouldn't pitch slurry into a beer above 6.5% ... sorry to be thick but I'm new to brewing and I wanted to be sure since I've been harvesting yeast and I do some beers around the 7% mark. Can anyone confirm this for me

 

[flars]

It was thought that yeast from a beer which had an ABV of 6.5% or higher should not be repitched to ferment any other beer. I regularly repitch from a 7.35% beer with nothing bad happening.

 

[LaffnJack]

The way i understand it, it means to use the yeast from a beer with an ABV of 6.5% or less. This helps insure that the yeast is not too stressed from fermentation and viable for the next batch. I often use a "starter" beer to build enough cells to brew my big beers. Right now I have an 80 shilling fermenting that will be the yeast starter for my barley wine.

-J-

 

[A2HB]

That's a load of BS I re pitch high gravity yeast cakes all the time and the beer comes out fine. By high gravity I mean >1.070 beers.

 

[Big Monk]

An example would be a brewery like Rochefort: they pitch vertically leading up to the 10. They start by pitching into the 6, then harvesting and pitching into the 8 and after the 10 it starts over.

That doesn't mean you can't pitch harvested yeast from a high gravity beer into a lower one, its just best practice not to.