So once again I am asking all these newbie questions. I honestly try and research first before coming here, but it is what it is. So I have an IPA that is getting transferred to the secondary tomorrow to dry hop. There is a beautiful 1 inch layer of yeast on the bottom right on top of the sediment. I am going to harvest it for future use. I am making a 10 gallon batch of a pale ale recipient I found next Wednesday. So would this yeast be ok for a pale ale, or should I stick to a IPA the next time I use it? So many frickin questions! I should buy a book on yeast.
I think it would be fine. you might get some hop bitterness carryover but probably not a ton. If you want you could make a starter with a tablespoon of the yeast from the IPA and use that in the Pale Ale. but you don’t have to.
Yeah, what mort said.
I reuse all the time and I have yet to see an issue with flavour carryover. For a 10 gal batch you probably need about a cup or so. Check mr malty. Using the whole cake would be over pitching and that would be worse in my opinion. So a 1/2 cup in 5 gals or so (just guessing- check mr malty) won’t be much of a percentage in the final brew.
I say go ahead or do a starter ala mort, either works but I wouldn’t personally bother with the starter just for the tiny hop carryover concern.
+1. The only time I thought I might have had a little flavor carry over was when I used some spices.
+2 i think the idea of pitching from small to big and light to dark is a set of ideal circumstances, but ones which I often break, and needless to say, I’ve never noticed any problem with it.
that said, I won’t repitch yeast from a batch over ~1.070 or something super dark, roasty like my recent american oatmeal stout, unless it was going right back into a stout.
Agreed. Sick and tires yeast is a different issue and I wouldn’t go dark to light unless I could live with the colour impact. Schwarzbier to Pilsner, probably a bad idea.
Generally it is better to start with the lower gravity beer (pale ale) and then go to a higher gravity beer (IPA). And recently I got a bit cavalier and decided to test this theory and used a slurry from a 1.077 tripel down to a 1.050 Belgian Pale and dumped the latter.
Shuucks…how come you dumped it? were the yeast pooped as predicted or did it have other flaws?
edit: no seriously - just curious why you dumped it.
Agreed, as to stepping up to higher gravity as the preferred method, but what about using a greater amount of the yeast slurry when stepping down or making a starter to then step down to a lighter gravity? As to color, couldn’t the same idea apply vis a vis a using a starter to avoid the color transfer or stepping down from dark to amber to light copper to lighter lager?