So I brewed a dark mild, OG 1.038, and pitched an English barleywine (1.090) onto the yeast cake. Used S-04. My question is, how much yeast cake will there be with this second beer? It's my first time doing this, so I just wanted to know what to expect with trub loss when I bottle. Will the cake double? Triple? I'm asking because I want to guesstimate fairly closely what my priming sugar amount needs to be.
Hard to say how much you will lose to the yeast cake, especially without knowing how much trub went from the kettle to the fermentor, as well as the exact volume of slurry from the mild and the trub from that batch. Personally, I would let it ferment out, rack to the bottling bucket, and get a precise measurement. Then boil up your priming solution to that exact volume. No problem with boiling up the solution real quick like and adding it hot. Just mix gently.
Really? Wow, yeah I guess just a cup or so of 200 degree liquid wouldn't harm the yeast? BTW, the fermentor is sitting at 4 gallons, planned on a 3 gallon batch, and I usually lose a .5 gallon. I didn't think about the amount of cake originally and what it might expand to. Thanks.
Different yeasts vary a lot in how much of a yeast cake they will produce. I have noticed really big ones with Wyeast Scottish Ale, but relatively smaller ones with the similar Irish Ale. And yes I am talking about a similar lower gravity 1st beer to step up the yeast. I was recently very surprised by how little yeast dropped from a Trappist High Gravity yeast pitched onto a smaller OG Dubbel after more than 5 weeks.
I would be more worried about your yeast pooping out and not carbonating your beer than a cup of hot sugar solution. I've never had success naturally carbonating beers with 9-10% abv so I gave up and force carbonate.
Haven't had trouble with 9% beers yet, knock on wood, and I don't want this barley wine very carbed, anyway. I hope it carbs up.
I am sure it will. Bottle and keep them warm for a couple of weeks, and let it go for a while. I opened a year-old barleywine that finished at 10+% that if anything seemed more carbonated now than at 2 months.
