Beer Forum

Has anybody ever tried “washing yeast” in the carboy?

I have a carboy of dopplebock fermented with White Labs 833 and want to pitch my Märzen on top of the yeast cake this weekend after I rack it to a lagering keg. I don’t really have the time or the means to get a starter going for this batch and need to get this fermenting this weekend in order to be ready for Oktoberfest.

I was thinking of boiling a gallon of distilled water, pouring that in, swirling it around and trying to decant whatever the water had picked up in it after the yeast settles out. I wouldn’t mind pitching to another dopplebock but going “lighter in color” makes me a bit concerned.

Maybe I should just DWHAHB about this...

Thoughts?

If this cake is from a primary, then you probably want to add the water, swirl, wair a few minutes, then pour off the milky liquid on top while leaving the chunky mess behind. If this is a secondary, then do what you propose. Unless you have a half gallon of beer left in there, though, I suspect you will not be able to tell the difference whether you rinse it or not.

You are going backward in gravity too. i don't like to repitch on anything that has seen over about 1.065 and I'm sure your doppelbock is way above that. I've never tried it though, and probably should before I go around repeating momilies!

I guess I'm worried abut that too. Anybody know what the results could be, worst case, if I pitch this marzen on the dopplebock yeast?

A general rule of repitching is up and/or across. Pale ale to IPA is up. IPA to IPA is across. Dopplebock to Marzen would be down, which is not favorable.

The higher alcohols produced in your Dopple has stressed the yeast so you wont get the fermentation performance that you would expect from that strain. You could get some off flavors and it could under attenuate on the Marzen.

Brian Perkey wrote:The higher alcohols produced in your Dopple has stressed the yeast so you wont get the fermentation performance that you would expect from that strain. You could get some off flavors and it could under attenuate on the Marzen.

Could you just over pitch in that case to make up for the lower attenuation, or will you still get off flavors?

Sheen wrote:

Brian Perkey wrote:The higher alcohols produced in your Dopple has stressed the yeast so you wont get the fermentation performance that you would expect from that strain. You could get some off flavors and it could under attenuate on the Marzen.

Could you just over pitch in that case to make up for the lower attenuation, or will you still get off flavors?

if the situation is cell count then yes, but I think one contributing factor is the alcohol levels those yeast had to deal with and the toxic threshold. It could be a situation where they start spitting out crap or their membranes become less permeable to where they wont even be able to take up sugars in the new beer. either way its just safer to not test your luck and build a fresh starter/buy new yeast.