washing yeast and using the cake...how to

[permo]

I have cultured two yeast strains from the bottle, chimay and rogue pacman. They are both currently fermenting 1.045 OG brews, with the full intentions of using the yeast cakes for bigger beers.

However, I want to preserve these yeast strains for future use.

I know that I should not culture yeast from high gravity fermentations, and that is exactly what I want to do with the yeast cakes.

So I am wondering how I can possible maybe wash half of the yeast cake and use the rest for washing?

Has anybody encountered this conundrum before?

 

[2bluewagons]

Your post is a little confusing, but I think I know what you're getting at.

I think that the best way would be to rinse the entire yeast cake(s) and retain only a portion of it for later use. The rest you add to the big beers in the fermentor. You might have a longer lag time due to the yeast being sleepy (depends on how long between racking the old beer off and pitching the new beer) but shouldn't be anything to worry about. Alternatively, you could just pour a portion of the old beer/cake slurry out and leave the rest in the carboy for fermenting the new batch.

Unless you're talking about lagers or very big beers (above 1.1), the amount of yeast in a cake left from a 5-gal batch of 1.045 beer would be far more than needed for most beers.

My $0.02, as I actually have not encountered this. I have only pitched onto a full cake in situations of stuck fermentations, and never as a primary plan. I use the pitching rate calc at mrmalty.com to figure starter size or slurry amounts.