Yeast Cake Questions

[mje1980]

I have an ordinary bitter down, and am running low on beer. I only have one fermenting fridge, so if i rack the beer, and leave it in a room of my house, it will go from 17-18c, to 28c!!. I dont want to do this. I want to rack to 2ndary, put it back in the fridge, keep the primary cake, then pitch new beer on top of the 2ndary yeast cake ( after bottling ). Can i do this?? is there enough yeast in the 2ndary???. If not, could i just add some primary slurry to the 2ndary when i pitch the new beer???

Any advice would be much appreciated

 

[Bionic]

From what I have heard is that the yeast in the secondary is the slow fermenting yeast.. could be wrong though....

 

[Steve Lacey]

From what I have heard is that the yeast in the secondary is the slow fermenting yeast.. could be wrong though....

[post="49062"][/post]​

Not so much as slow, more that it is biased towards the less flocculant yeast in the population. Either way, I don't think it is recommended to ferment on the slurry from a secondary fermentation. It would be better to clean and sanitize the fermenter after bottling and use some slurry from the primary fermenter, assuming you have looked after it since harvesting.

 

[jayse]

I totally agree with steve there, i have had yeast that will refuse to flocculate from the secondary so pretty well don't use that yeast anymore. I use yeast from the primary fermentor all the time though.
Around 250ml of slurry into a couple litres of the fresh wort on brewday then a few hours later pitch it into the main batch. You don't need to make a starter out of it like this i just do it for a bit more piece of mind.
I think it is a good idea to do this for a higher gravity wort though as it gives you the chance to give the yeast more 02 when you pitch it to the main batch insuring you get 4-5 times population growth and insuring good attenuation.

As soon as any yeast shows even the very slightest sign that it is performing differently i would not use it.

Happy brewing!
Jayse