Can I Do This?

[The Big Burper]

Evening all,

I have a Coopers APA , using S-04 yeast, fermenting in the fridgemate fridge for past 7 days. I leave all brews for 14 days before kegging.

I am due to do a Coopers Real Ale in a couple of days time. I want to use S-04 on that as well.

Can I take a litre of wort from the APA to seed the Real Ale? (Not using the Coopers yeast).

Would there be enough active yeast cells to get things going?

Any other suggestions?

cheers

Dave

 

[cubbie]

How about racking your APA to secondary and then dumping you real ale onto the yeast cake? Or dump to secondary and get a cup full of the yeast slurry, clean out the fermenter and then use the slurry. Third option is to skim some yeast off the top, but after 7 days i doubt there is much to skim.

If you have been fermenting for seven days I would not expect that you are going to pick up enough yeast to get your next brew firing away. You could make a starter from what you extract or if you do dump it in then it may be very slow to get going.

 

[~MikE]

um, after bottling, swirl the yeast cake up and tap into a bottle, then pitch that.

EDIT: i remember s04- you might have to scrape it into a glass or something, then cover...

 

[buttersd70]

As mike said....should get enough for 2 brews. You would only need to use about 1/2 a cup (if thick) or about 3/4 of a cup (if thin).
edit...ahh, I misread. You want to use wort, as opposed to yeastcake. yeah, use it to make a starter...

 

[Bribie G]

Dave:
If I get you right, what you are saying is that you would like to get some SO4 out of your current brew ahead of time, before it is ready to keg, and use now it on the new brew. If right now you were to go to your fermenter and draw off a half litre or so out of the tap, you can be pretty sure that the first 'rush' of beer will be very murky and cloudy and would certainly contain enough yeast to work with.

Probably best idea would be to culture it up a bit before pitching into the real ale. All I would do is to draw off that first rush to half fill a 1.25L woolies lemonade type PET bottle, sanitised, and add some boiled light dried malt extract, say a couple of dessert spoons boiled in a cup of water then cooled. Then give it an almighty shake to oxygenate it in the bottle. This should get the yeast back into breeding mode as opposed to fermenting mode and in my experience you should have a nice little yeast volcano going within three or four hours. When you get to that stage, you should be ready to pitch. I actually have one of those going at the moment, as I'm renovating some saved yeast cake for a new brew. pitching in an hour or so

Piccie shows some yeast cake that was diluted with 500ml of sterile water in a 1.5 L V8 glass jar and fed on some LDME from up the street. Would probably have the same cell count as what you propose.



Cheers
Michael

 

[smollocks]

All I would do is to draw off that first rush to half fill a 1.25L woolies lemonade type PET bottle, sanitised, and add some boiled light dried malt extract, say a couple of dessert spoons boiled in a cup of water then cooled.

2 questions:

1. Would the recultured yeast impart any taste of the old brew onto the new brew?

2. Am I correct in assuming that a few dessert spoons of LDME in the starter wouldn't add anything noticeable to the taste of the new brew?

 

[Supra-Jim]

2 questions:

1. Would the recultured yeast impart any taste of the old brew onto the new brew?

2. Am I correct in assuming that a few dessert spoons of LDME in the starter wouldn't add anything noticeable to the taste of the new brew?

1. It can do, extreme example would be using a yesdt that fermented a stout to then ferment a nice clean pale ale. Trick here is to either re-use similar the yeast on similar beer or always go from lighter(milder) to darker (heavier) brews. Heavily hopped beers can do this also. Try doing a little research (um i mean googling) on yeast washing).

2. This is true, however it depends on the size of your starter volume, some starters can be stepped up to 2-3 litres (depending on yeast and wort composition) and the idea of tipping 2-3 litres of semi fermented LDME liquid into a finely balanced and lovingly created wort may not be desired. Under these circumstances you can crash chill the yeast to get it to drop out of suspension, then carefully pour off the majority of the liquid. Leave a little liquid behind, allow the yeast to gently warm back up to the wort temp, swirl around to re-suspend and then bam! pitch away!

:icon_cheers: SJ

 

[apd]

Any other suggestions?

Buy another packet of S04?

Andrew

 

[The Big Burper]

Thanks for all the suggestions. As for buying another packet of yeast, some of us have to practice certain economies.

I finally racket it off and salvaged the yeast cake. Boy, the S-04 is a solid one.

I originally took a litre from the tap into a clean 2 litre glass flagon, (from a previous life), filled with 1 litre cooled boiled water and stuck it in the fridge. Luckily a large goop
of yeastcake came out as well, and fridged it.

I reckon you could get a good tablespoon from this method, as there was a significant amount showing on the bottom of the flagon even after a couple of hours. The point of this exercise is that you could re-use the yeast without rootin around too much, just draw enough off and seed the next batch. I will try this again on another batch.

Anyway, I'll use the 1/2 cup method, as the yeast is fresh, and I'll probably put down the next brew tomorrow. The yeast is now resting in the fridgemate fridge


I'll let yers know how it turns out.

cheers
Dave

 

[apd]

Thanks for all the suggestions. As for buying another packet of yeast, some of us have to practice certain economies.

Big Burper,

I applaud your thriftiness but we're talking about $4.90! And it sounds like the economy you're practising is a false economy - there are all those hidden costs in doing every day things around the house that you need to take into account. I'm not saying they'll cost the equivalent of a packet of dried yeast but they should be considered.

In trying to re-use a previous batch of yeast you'll be spending money on boiling water (gas/electricity), cooling it down (electricity), washing up (detergent/more gas or electricity for hot water) plus all the water used in all those processes.

On top of that, you increase your risk of infection which means you might end up ruining the entire brew and you've wasted the money you spent on ingredients.

Of course, practising the techniques involved in re-using yeast will stand you in good stead for when you spend more money on liquid yeast.

Happy Yeast Re-using!

Andrew