Weird yeast cake layer

[melykabeer]

Hi All

I have been brewing for a few years now and have never seen this happen. Should i be worried?

[melykabeer]

I am using a harvested us-5 yeast from a previous brew a few weeks ago, fermenting @ 18'C. Reused about a tallie worth of yeast cake which settled down to about 1/3 in the fridge. I just shook it up and tipped it in.

[warra48]

Looks OK to me. Some of mine have looked like that and been OK.
I think a tallie of yeast cake is way too much, a cupful is sufficient.
You've just ended up with more trub than usual because of that, including hop residue from the tallie.

Have you tasted the beer? That's the real test.

[Oliver]

Have you tasted the beer? That's the real test.

Exactly what I would have said if I'd got in first.

Cheers,

Oliver

[melykabeer]

Thanks Guys
I will taste it tomorrow and might give it a quick stir when i dry hop.

I wasnt sure if i was over pitching it was a tallie yes but was not pure yeast cake. I usually have 1-2l of beer sitting ontop of the yeast cake at the end. I gave it a good swirl then filled the tallie with the emulsion. After a few weeks in the fridge its settled to little less then half full. I have 2 tallies of it, if this beer turns out alright I might only pitch half next time then recap and save the rest.

[melykabeer]

Tastes absolutely fine. Thanks

[sly]

Sorry, I'm just a newbie with a newbie question.

Hope you don't mind

When I hear "yeast cake" I image a solid piece of clumpy material, something I could pick up in my hand, something like your photo. But, cleaning out my first brew all I had was a fine, cloudy suspension, sort of like sand (but much finer). There wasn't that much of it either, maybe a half a cup or so.

So, maybe I under-pitched the yeast or had bad yeast or I didn't aerate the wort enough.

So, with a yeast cake, what is normal / expected?

Thanks, and sorry if it's a silly question.

[Bum]

Not a silly question at all but not an easy one to answer definitively.

It depends on the yeast, really. Some settle hard as a rock, some stay really quite sloppy.

It does sound like you've been a bit short changed on the yeast cake front, though. How long was the batch in the fermenter in total?

[squirt in the turns]

Some settle hard as a rock

That's bit of an overstatement, right Bum? If I found anything rock hard in the bottom of my fermenter, I'd be thinking something had gone badly wrong!

[Bum]

Yes, a slight overstatement but I have had some high-floccing yeasts that require a real high-pressure squirt from the (variable pressure) showerhead to come loose. No amount of swirling would loosen the lot. YMMV.

[sly]

Not a silly question at all but not an easy one to answer definitively.

It depends on the yeast, really. Some settle hard as a rock, some stay really quite sloppy.

It does sound like you've been a bit short changed on the yeast cake front, though. How long was the batch in the fermenter in total?

16 days, although there was no activity after 12. Actually I ran out of bottles, so I left some in the fermenter for another week until I could get some more. It's interesting to note the difference in taste leaving it to condition for that period makes.

[Bum]

I was wondering if the reason may have been that it wasn't in primary long but that obviously isn't the case. Not sure what it could be, really. Any chance some of it went into the first batch of bottles?

Try not to compare your future yeast cakes to the one pictured above - I've never had one go up to (over?) the tap before.

[melykabeer]

When I bottled this one it was just a thin layer on the outside above the tap it was pretty much normal other than that. If I drained away all the liquid and just left the settled yeast I would guess at 2 cups of it. That is using the coopers yeast with kit + 1kg of LDME as all the fermentables.