Racking onto yeast in kegs: Can you store yeast cakes in co2 filled kegs?

[Ashevillain]

So I want to rack beer onto yeast cakes that were fermented in corny kegs.

It seems perfect really, do a closed transfer of beer in primary to secondary/serving keg, blowing off some of the initial bottom part (trub, dead cells) of the yeast cake in the process of transferring.

Then Re-rack fresh wort onto remaining yeast in keg which should be more than enough for a healthy fermentation. Repeat 4-5 times.

My question is can I transfer today and re-rack tomorrow? My thoughts are that it would be okay because the drained keg with the yeast cake will be full of c02. It wasn't at any point exposed to the outside of the keg/oxygen.

Has anyone done this and how long have you stored yeast cakes before noticing undesirable results from storing in c02 purged cornies?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[billl]

Yeast don't mind O2. In fact, you are probably planning on adding oxygen to your wort before transferring, right? The thing that kills yeast is 1) temp 2) time. 1 day are room temps won't be an issue at all.

What will be an issue is that you are massively overpitching if you put any sort of normal strength beer on an entire yeast cake. If you want to save yeast over multiple generations, you really want to maximize your yeast health.

 

[Ashevillain]

Okay so ideally I should be:
-brewing something a bit higher gravity to match the needs of the entire population
-blowing off maybe 1/2 of the yeast cake after primary transfer to not overpitch
-blowing off the entire yeast cake and washing/portioning.