The Bar Towel

gents,
bottling a quad tomorrow. 6 months of carboy conditioning, and now time to bottle.
would you add yeast prior to bottling? if so, which yeast/how much?

bottling big beer and/or things that have sat for a while, i'll usually add some fresh yeast. not likely to be much yeast left, and what would be there is tired at best.

ideally, you'd use the same yeast strain. barring that, something similar, or as a last resort something neutral. you don't want to introduce a vastly different yeast that'll chew sugars the others didn't... but if you stick similar (ales) you should be alright. a packet of S-05 is usually a safe bet since it's pretty neutral. i figure too much just means a little extra sediment and too little means not enough carb, so i generally throw a packet in 10gal.

6 months isn't _too_ long though, so i wouldn't sweat it too much either way.

grub wrote:bottling big beer and/or things that have sat for a while, i'll usually add some fresh yeast. not likely to be much yeast left, and what would be there is tired at best.

ideally, you'd use the same yeast strain. barring that, something similar, or as a last resort something neutral. you don't want to introduce a vastly different yeast that'll chew sugars the others didn't... but if you stick similar (ales) you should be alright. a packet of S-05 is usually a safe bet since it's pretty neutral. i figure too much just means a little extra sediment and too little means not enough carb, so i generally throw a packet in 10gal.

6 months isn't _too_ long though, so i wouldn't sweat it too much either way.

it was an East Coast Labs strain, so i don't have any extra.
would champagne yeast be neutral?

atomeyes wrote:it was an East Coast Labs strain, so i don't have any extra.
would champagne yeast be neutral?

hmm... i'd stay in the same family. don't so much care which lab produced it, more the type it was - ale, lager, wine, brett, etc... switch to a new bug and you can get further fermentation you weren't expecting and bottle bombs. if it was one of their ale strains, a neutral ale strain (like S-05, WLP001, wy1056) is a good option, and i usually use dry because it's cheap, handy, and reliable. even if you think of champagne as "neutral", it's a different bug that eats slightly different things.

some strains are more fickle when it comes to alcohol tolerance too (not that i'd expect it of a quad strain), so they can die off when there is still sugar left just because they can't handle the abv. jump up to a more alcohol tolerant strain (such as champagne) and you can again lead to trouble. keep it simple and pick something close to the original.

grub wrote:

atomeyes wrote:it was an East Coast Labs strain, so i don't have any extra.
would champagne yeast be neutral?

hmm... i'd stay in the same family. don't so much care which lab produced it, more the type it was - ale, lager, wine, brett, etc... switch to a new bug and you can get further fermentation you weren't expecting and bottle bombs. if it was one of their ale strains, a neutral ale strain (like S-05, WLP001, wy1056) is a good option, and i usually use dry because it's cheap, handy, and reliable. even if you think of champagne as "neutral", it's a different bug that eats slightly different things.

some strains are more fickle when it comes to alcohol tolerance too (not that i'd expect it of a quad strain), so they can die off when there is still sugar left just because they can't handle the abv. jump up to a more alcohol tolerant strain (such as champagne) and you can again lead to trouble. keep it simple and pick something close to the original.

original was the ECY trappist yeast. worried about using, for example, White lab's Abbaye strain. new flavours.

I would not use champagne. It's likely to find sugars that your primary strain did not. Also champagne yeast is not neutral IMO, if I were you I'd use Safeale S-33 or US-05.

If you stick with wine yeast I'd add it a few days before bottling rather then at bottling. That way you can see if it kicks off another fermentation before you add your priming sugar.

atomeyes wrote:original was the ECY trappist yeast. worried about using, for example, White lab's Abbaye strain. new flavours.

you don't really have to worry about that. it's similar to the argument about what kind of priming sugar to use - it's such a small amount of fermentation that you're not going to get any noticeable difference in flavour. two abbey strains are likely going to eat more or less the same sugars, so chances are that another abbey strain is going to find little or nothing to eat and thus not impart anything new. so as matt and i have suggested, stick with a neutral ale strain - S-05 that we both suggested or possibly S-33 that he suggested (haven't used it so I can't comment personally).

I've had good success with S-04, it flocs well, and typically won't start munching on any residual sugars the other yeast couldn't ferment.

For a 20l beer, it takes about 1 gram of dry yeast to provide the yeast necessary to bottle condition a beer.

The math goes something like this.

1 - 2 million cells per ml. 1 - 2 billion cells per litre. 20-40 billion cells per 20l batch. 20 billion cells per gram of dry yeast. So ... between 1 and 2 grams of dry yeast.

If you go that route, you have to be OMG certain that your yeast is evenly distributed.

Jason

Edit: for that matter, most keg-conditioned homebrew I've imbided probably has more than enough yeast for bottle conditioning.

yeah, and 6 months is really not that long, so i'd likely go without unless i had an abundance of yeast handy. 1-2 years, yeah, i'll definitely throw some yeast at it. i generally try to stir it in pretty well and let it sit (along with priming sugar) for 15min or so to make sure there's fairly even distribution... if not, you just end up with a little extra sediment in a few. another reason why going a little overboard on yeast isn't too big a deal - means you're certain you've got some in every bottle.

thanks, gents.
bottled both my quad and my sour stout w/o any additional yeasties.

using your above rules and going from what i've heard, grub, when you bottle your gueuze, do you just add priming sugar and go?

atomeyes wrote:thanks, gents.
bottled both my quad and my sour stout w/o any additional yeasties.

using your above rules and going from what i've heard, grub, when you bottle your gueuze, do you just add priming sugar and go?

the gueuze is much more complicated since it's a blend, and not fully fermented. i did add some yeast, though it's not strictly necessary. i also added priming sugar, but knowing how much to use is where it gets interesting...

grub wrote:

atomeyes wrote:thanks, gents.
bottled both my quad and my sour stout w/o any additional yeasties.

using your above rules and going from what i've heard, grub, when you bottle your gueuze, do you just add priming sugar and go?

the gueuze is much more complicated since it's a blend, and not fully fermented. i did add some yeast, though it's not strictly necessary. i also added priming sugar, but knowing how much to use is where it gets interesting...

go on....

(i have a 11 month of lambic that i'm going to bottle within the next 6 months)