Pitching onto old yeast and beer???

[Mephistopholes]

I've just finished bottling AG3 which was a bit of a nightmare brewday what with the cooler leaking smashing the hydrometer and various other calamities.
AG3 stayed true to form even during bottling (to be fair she fermented out with no problems) when i ran out of bottles.
a complete miscalcu;lation. i had 5 litres left in the FV.

Now i was wondering....

i'm having a brewday tomorrow, still slightly undecided as what it will be, but brewday there will be. i'm thinking porter or big brown ale.
Could I pitch the hopefully 25 litres of fresh unfermented bitter wort onto or into the previous batch of beer and yeast hopefully saving on a packet of yeast?

a few things i think you may need to know.

i added sugar to the FV before bottling for obvious reasons and fermentation seems to have almost immediately restarted. i'm hoping this means the yeasties are strong enough to ward off any infection and ferment another batch.

it will be almost impossible to find any way of bottling the beer tomorrow without cancelling my brewday completely. my next chance could be 2 weeks away.

i dont mind the idea of a slight blend in flavours as after tasting the last batch its to my palate fairly light slightly butterscotchy with a medium hop kick and crackle. and what i plan for tomorrow will be big strong dark(ish) and very flavoursome.

i only have ritchies real ale yeast in the house!!!!! anyone comment on ritchies real yeast? am hoping for a delivery of s04 but not guaranteed.

:hmm:

Any help would be really helpful

 

[Mephistopholes]

smelt and tasted the beer this morning and was slightly staler than last night.
luckily whilst getting sausages on my way home i found a 5gal plastic tub of mineral water for £1.79 in my cornershop so i poured the beer in here.
ive left the yeast still in the bottom of the FV added a little sugar and swirled it round with the remaining beer to see if anything happens.
i know that its fine to pitch directly onto a yeast cake. but how long can the yeast be left unrefridgerated in the fv before it becomes unusable? would overnight be too long? a couple of hours? or are you guys bottling as your wort is cooling so you can dump the fresh stuff immediately in there?


heres my grain bill for today anyway

6kg mo pale
500g crystal
500g caramalt <<<< 5 Gallon brew
500g brown malt
100g chocolate
100g torrefied wheat
i want something big thick flavoursome and warming for when i get back late from work and have time for only one.
still working on the hop bill.

Comments welcome :

 

[Mephistopholes]

well the yeast and old bit of beer is loving the sugar and is fermenting away fine.

mash tun is full right up to the brim and hlt is on for the sparge.

i'm suprised and a little dissapointed nobody here knows if todays pitch onto the old yeast sounds safe or not.

 

[Mephistopholes]

first runnings taste amazing. really sweet slightly darker than i thought but i gues i havent sparged yet.

heres the hop bill

60 mins 25g columbos
35g challenger

15 mins 50g golding
irish moss/ 1 campden

-80c steep 50g golding
50g cascade
25g columbos
15g challenger

i've decided since no one has an answer for the yeast situation to get my balls out and experiment by throwing down on top. ingredients for this batch are less than 15quid so i dont mind having a gamble as reusing my own yeast could potentially save a lott of money down the line.

 

[Mephistopholes]

Boils nearly over just ten minutes left and thought it worth appealing for advice one last time before i do commit.

the bubbles in the fv are every couple of minutes at the moment.

there is a coating of yeast on the sides of the FV, around 700 ml of trub or yeast at the bottom and on top of that around 800 ml beer. also above the beer there is a nice fine layer- of active yeast.

anyone? anyone?..... bueller?

 

[garwatts]

You will be fine - don't worry :thumb: Not sure about adding sugar to it though - that was unnecessary in my view. My last brew I pitched onto the trub (in four FVs) for a total of nearly 100 litres and am drinking now - I will definitely do it again.

 

[Mephistopholes]

Thanks for the reassurance. :

Gonna have a homebrew now and not think about it

 

[evanvine]

The yeast in your "trub" will last quite happily up to a max of 6 weeks from pitching.
If you wish to keep it longer you will need to think about washing and chilling/freezing.

 

[Mephistopholes]

6 Weeks!!! just sat in the FV with the lid on???? obviously the lid was off for a good long while during bottling as well. sat in this warm weather!!!!

This is wonderful news to me as i only have one FV and tend to brew on the day of bottling or the day after. and i hate paying 3-5quid a batch for yeast when i could buy a bag of delicious hops for that.

Fermentation today is insane btw. The krausen is 5 litres high and theres no pause between bubbles. its just constant blub blub blub :grin:

 

[Aleman]

6 Weeks!!! just sat in the FV with the lid on???? obviously the lid was off for a good long while during bottling as well. sat in this warm weather!!!!

Actually you would stand a very good chance of ruining your next batch of beer if you did that. The good news is that you only need 100ml of the yeast slurry from the FV to start the next batch of beer. . . . so if you

boil a kettle and allow it to cool . . .
bottle your beer . . . Put lid on FV
Pour contents of kettle onto yeast cake (ONCE THE WATER HAS COOLED) . . . .
Swirl and shake it around gently to disperse the yeast cake into the water. . . . .
Pour very thick yeasty water into a (clean disinfected) jam jar . . . .
Cover with Cling film . . . .
Store cool . . . preferably in the fridge . . . will keep like this for a couple of weeks.

I have left yeast slurry in a covered container for 6 weeks . . . . It smelt like burning rubber tyres when it was opened . .. really turned my stomach . . . others may be happy putting that in a batch of beer . . . but not me.

 

[Mephistopholes]

Ok that seems like a much safer option aleman. i'm gonna go down that route next time.

I hope this batch is gonna be ok difficult to gauge the smells coming out of the airlock. so much co2. mostly hop smells though there might be some of that saison style spicy soft fruit (banana?) aroma too.

i guess i'll just have to wait and see.

 

[craigite]

I always use yeast from earlier brews.
I did try the water from the kettle bit as aleman writes, but don't anymore.
I rack the brew into a clean FV when the final gravity is reached, the yeast and little brew left in the bucket thats' left get gently swirled around put into a large sterilised tub. I leave this in the fridge for about 1/2 an hour then pour the top cloudy 'brew' into pre sterilised 50ml sample tubs, what sunk to the bottom is no use to me. I thought the little brew would help keep the yeast happy.
These 'samples' go into fridge till needed.
I repeat this every 4-6 weeks or when I have only 3 yeast samples left. I always use a starter which helps to confirm the yeast is ok.

Tried many different ways, this one works well for me, the beer tastes the way I like and I've yet to have a beer spoil.
I've been using the same yeast, refreshed in new brews every 4-6 weeks, for the last 9 months.

 

[Mephistopholes]

Thanks for all the advice i think i'm definately gonna start growing up my own yeast cultures now.

Why pay when you can get precisely what you want for free?

also i was wondering.... :grin:

i've heard of people growing up cultures from the bottom of bottle conditioned beer.

correct me if i'm wrong but couldn't the same thing be done with the bottom of a cask of ale?

I work in a real ale pub as a cellarman so have potentially just stumbled across a wide and varied free supply of professional yeast strains :shock:

 

[Mephistopholes]

Just giving this a little bump. still intrested to see whether my attempts at yeast harvesting from the bottom of cask ale are gonna work out? :pray: