I usually use lowans yeat in my washes but recently i have been thinking about using some ale yeasts in my scotch and bourbon ferments. I am a bit of a tightarse and i also do 150L washes, so buying nice ale yeasts for this size ferment is going to get costly (all grain washes are costly enough as it is).
In my beer brewing i usually reuse the yeast left over in the bottom of my fermenter by pouring mostof it out and leaving behind a cups worth and repitching a cube of wort on top. I have reused yeast up to 20times in this manner (probably more realistically) and very rarely get an infection.
I would feel uncomfortable resuing yeast from my whisky ferments because they are far from sanitary and would become contaminated after the first generation i imagine.
I've been thinking of using pitching the yeast from the bottom of my beer barrel. This yeast s very healthy and fresh however it may be contaminated with hops. At most it would be a litre of beer and yeast in a 150L wash, do you think this would make a difference?
I really want to try recultured coopers yeast in a whisky ferment to make a true 'asutralian' whisky. It is the only yeast that comes to mind that would be uniquely australian. Would gets lots of esters and flavours from this yeast too.