Advice for racking and pitching on yeast cake

[Matt]

I'm brewing tomorrow and my Tribs Amarillo IPA needs racking to secondary so I am considering pitching on the US-56 yeast cake.

Questions:

- The head on the IPA seems there to stay, and is silky but quite solid looking (brew is ten days old). Should I skim this before racking to secondary?

- Is pitching on a yeast cake as simple as pitching the new wort into the sludge in the existing fv? Or should the sludge be transferred to a clean fv?

- If I don't skim, OK to pitch on the combined sludge/cake, once the IPA has been racked?

Thank you kind gents,
Matt

[Andy]

You don't want to use the top of the yeast head as part of the new brew so I'd skim it, rack the IPA and then transfer some clean slurry to a second sanitised fermenter as DaaB suggests.

[Matt]

Thanks men. Glad I checked.

[NzDan1]

I was just wondering? what is you guys definition of skimming is?
I just tonight skimmed the top of fermenting wort with a ladle and used that to start a fresh brew!
Ived used the leftover yeast at the bottom of the fermentor a few times before, sometimes racking it straight onto the yeast cake from a previous brew, sometimes it was out of control, started fast but bubbled out of the airlock and the finished beer suffered, and tasted yeasty, sometimes it was all good,
When I think of skimming, it s when you skim the top of fermenting wort and use that in a fresh wort (but thats just my thinking), how can you skim the bottom of the fermentor?

[NzDan1]

OK so ive done it good then, ladling off the top of wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast after 2 days of fermenting and adding that to my fresh wort, its started already after 6 hours!

[charlie]

What I've read somewhere is to pitch onto the yeast in the bottom of your secondary.
Will be cleaner than that in primary but may be a little sluggish.
Ihave done this in the past with kits/extract brews with

[Matt]

All went fine with my re-pitching (thanks DaaB). I spooned out as much of the yeast cake as possible into a clean fv, pitched and it was krausening in three hours.

Cheers,
Matt