I pitched a stout onto a yeast cake from an Irish Red, using 1084 yeast. I have never done this before, but my god, what a reaction.
Without the blow off tube I think my fermenter would have been rolling around the shed.
I went from start, to a finish of 1012 in 26 hours!
I had heard that pitching onto the yeast cake got things going quickly, but this was insane. I didn't aerate the wort, and it still kicked off, blurbling three burps a second, in just over 2 hours.
I've had the same thing happen with a coopers irish stout brewed with 100 gms carafa special 3 and 150 gms choc. malt, the fermenter was covered in foam for 24 hours.My fermentation has slowed a fair bit now,but i usually get this from coopers dark ale and stout kits.The yeast seem to love whatever is in the dark malts and create a volcano when brewed!!!I have cut the narrow bottom off my s-shaped airlock so it doesn't get blocked when this happens,as i had one brew pressurise so badly last year,that when i released the pressure by pulling out the airlock,the jet of krausen hit the ceiling,there was some serious pressure build up in there.
I would have lost my lid if I used an airlock, so I fitted a blow off tube which I fed into into a flask of iodopher. The liquid was the usual yellow colour, but after 24 hrs of vigirous activity, it was crystal clear!
The trub was also the weirdest looking I have ever seen. Sort of fluffy, and really thick.
If you brew at high temps. then ale yeasts will finish pretty quick,sometimes less than 30 hours.The only problem is,the brew will be pretty fruity and finish in 2 or 3 days.Better to keep the brew at 18 degrees and avoid the fruit flavours ,if you can help it.
of course i could always take a good look at a teabone steak by shovin my head up a cows ass but im willin to take a butchers word for it?
Who said I brewed at high temps?
I use fermentation control. Whole fermentation sat between 18-20 degrees.
This was an AG brew with a liquid yeast, not a K&K with the Coopers yeast
I've got a Shwarzbier(sp) boiling ATM that I intend to pitch onto a yeast slurry tomorrow. It will be going onto Danstar Nottingham Ale yeast, that currently has an Altbier going down.
I'll re-post tomorrow and let you know if it goes like a rocket or not.
There is no such thing as bad beer. There is only good beer and better beer.
Ok, pitched my Shwarzbier onto the Nottingham yeast around 8 ;30 this morning.
As I sit here and type, it has around 30 mm of krausen with heaps of activity through the airlock.
Hasn't exactly exploded into action, but that is a very short lag time.
There is no such thing as bad beer. There is only good beer and better beer.
ACTbrewer wrote:I pitched a stout onto a yeast cake from an Irish Red, using 1084 yeast. I have never done this before, but my god, what a reaction.
Without the blow off tube I think my fermenter would have been rolling around the shed.
I went from start, to a finish of 1012 in 26 hours!
I had heard that pitching onto the yeast cake got things going quickly, but this was insane. I didn't aerate the wort, and it still kicked off, blurbling three burps a second, in just over 2 hours.
Anyone ever had a super speed ferment like this?
Repitching is a great way to get minimal lag and plenty of active yeast into the wort. As you noted, there's no need to aerate when you repitch since the yeast in the fermenter has already gone through an adaptive phase with the first brew - so when you pitched the fresh wort, the yeast was ready and raring to go with the anaerobic (non oxygen) fermentation.
I use this method when I make lagers and strong beers - for example, I'm planning on a 7.3% dunkel weizenbock - so I brew a basic wheat beer with the Hefeweizen strain and then repitch the weizenbock wort onto the established yeast cake to get plenty of active yeast into the high gravity wort...
Cheers,
TL
I've twice repitched onto a yeast cake (once a stout onto a dark ale and most recently a pale ale onto a pale ale) and each time, it has happened just as Trough Lolly says - it jumps right out of the fermenter. Nice way to jump-start a fermentation if you have compatible brews.
I've collected a few big scoops of yeast slurry after bottling with a sterilised ice-cream bucket and kept it in the fridge in a sterilised PET bottle,
and I've also drawn off a couple of litres of fermenting beer in high krausen and added it to a new batch,
but I've never poured fresh wort into a dirty fermenter.
Ha, Ha! I wish it was that easy!
Repitching is a nice short cut, especially when you do back to back brews but remember there's a lot of stuff in trub that can influence the final result of the next beer - that's why I plan the brews and do the APA first then an Amber followed by a Stout if you want to get game and do a triple repitch. By the third brew, there's quite a lot of trub in the fermenter so you might want to strain out the hops and other break material from the boil to avoid having 6 litres of trub in the bottom of the third batch!
Just keep everything clean and you should have no probs - after the third batch, I decant the trub into some large bottles till they're half full and top up with pre-boiled water and let them stand for 30 mins. Then I decant the milky solution into cleaned PET bottles discard what remained in the original bottles and I've got plenty of fresh yeast for the next couple of months. I keep the yeast in the fridge and if I don't use it in the first two months, or it darkens to the colour of peanut butter, I ditch it.
Cheers,
TL
