Title says it all. Thinking of dropping a 1.075 beer on a yeast cake from a 1.054 beer. Is overpitching a large concern and why? Thanks in advance!
Decreased esters would be the most common consequence of overpitching. Which may be good or bad, depending on what you want. But there's no rule that says you have to use the whole yeast cake.
My viewpoint... a sanitized spoon (for example) would introduce an extremely small risk of infection. Smaller than, say, the bugs that could fall into wort while chilling. Or the risk introduced by cleaning off a blow-off mess caused by severe overpitching. (Just sayin') I'd at least recommend using one of the calculators to estimate the amount of yeast you have, to get some idea of how overpitched the use of the whole cake is likely to be. One last thought... people do what you're contemplating and like the results. It's just not the way I would recommend doing it.
I typically overpitch. I enjoy my beers. I usually am using something clean and neutral anyway. If you're looking for more yeast profile, you should use a proper pitching rate. If you're doing a hop-forward beer, it's fine to overpitch a little.
I would pitch right into the yeast cake. A lot of sediment will be in your fermentor. If you have a spigot it may get clogged. Something to keep in mind.
doing some quick math it looks like I only need about 1/3 of the cake. I dont feel like rigging up a blow off so I'll be doing some scooping. Thanks all.
Simpler and safer than scooping is to add a fixed volume of sterile water to the cake, resuspend cake and transfer to sterile vessel (bottle) with volume markings on it. Pour required amount of water/yeast solution into you beer (e.g. 1/3 of final volume).
