Nevertheless, there are times when I don't have 4-6 hours to make an all grain beer. Last night, I made a delicious Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone with eight pounds of Alexander's Extra Light Liquid Malt Extract, one ounce of Perle hops (60 minutes), and one ounce of Cascade hops (end of boil). I love the simplicity of this recipe and the taste of the beer.
To strike a blow closer to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, steep 0.5 lb to 1.0 lb of crystal cracked grain (60L) in 170 F water prior to the boil and use Wyeast 1056 liquid yeast (make at least a pint starter).
After I cooled the hot liquid down to 75 degrees with my copper immersion chiller, I siphoned off the cooled wort directly on to a Nottingham yeast cake, making sure to aerate the wort with lots of splashing and stirring. Yes, I know that I didn't follow my own suggestion for yeast above. But the beauty of homebrewing is that you get to break some rules. Both Nottingham dry and Wyeast 1056 are clean, neutral yeasts.
Where did the Nottingham yeast cake come from? Well, while my wort was cooling down, I was busy moving fermenting beer from my primary to my secondary vessel. The yeast cake is the thick sludge of hops and yeast found at the bottom of the primary. A technique to obtain a cleaner yeast cake is to use the spent yeast at the bottom of the secondary fermentation vessel. Personally, I haven't found any difference in the taste of the final beer.
For people who are really turned off by pouring "clean wort" on top of the sludge found at the bottom of the fermentation vessel, check out Yeast Washing for the Home Brewer.
My own "take" is that the more you handle yeast, the more risk there is for infection. If the
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