I have an Imperial Pils that I plan on bottling this weekend. It’s been lagering for about 10weeks. I plan on adding a little yeast at bottling just to be safe. I’m also brewing a beer this weekend that I have a 2L California Lager yeast starter cold crashing right now. My question is can I just use some yeast from the starter when I go to bottle the Pils? I assume it’s fine, but how much do I want to use? The Imperial Pils is only a 3 gallon batch.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Can’t say I’ve got experience with a Pils but on beers that have aged for a long time I referred to NB’s guide on bottle conditioning. They have suggestions for yeast counts with dry yeast but I’m sure you could convert that to yeast from your starter. http://www.northernbrewer.com/documenta … ioning.pdf
I would rather not risk under-yeasting at the last stage of the beer, so I would just use a couple grams of dry yeast instead of trying to estimate a proper amount of slurry. Plus you’ll limit the amount of sediment you add using the dry yeast.
I did this last week with a bigger beer that I want to add some yeast to the bottles just to be sure. I just poured a little in. No numbers, no science, just eyeballed the appropriate number of yeast cells…Yep…my bottles are most likely going to explode.
[quote=“mplsbrewer”]Yep…my bottles are most likely going to explode.[/quote]Only if you left unfermented sugar in the beer - more yeast does not equal more carbonation for a given amount of sugar.
I’ve had good success with rehydrating a pack of safale05 in 1/2 cup of boiled-cooled water, and adding 1/4 of that slurry to the bottling bucket with my priming sugar before bottling. This was taking into account a fully attenuated beer after a 2 week primary and 2 week secondary using a very flocculant yeast (wy1272). No bottle bombs, and fully carbed beer. This is the same method I’ve read about for bottle conditioning strong beers that have had prolonged aging.
I’m facing a similar problem. I’m about 10 days into a primary for NB’s bourbon barrel porter. I was thinking that when I transfer to secondary, that I’d save the yeast cake in the primary. I’ll wash it, and keep it in the fridge till I want to bottle. Then, I’ll make a starter with the primary yeast slurry and add it back to the bottling bucket when ready. Any thoughts on this process?
[quote=“Marcados”]I’ll make a starter with the primary yeast slurry and add it back to the bottling bucket when ready.[/quote]Seems like a lot of time and effort compared to hydrating half a pack of dry yeast and you’d be introducing some uncertainty plus a risk of infection, but if it’s something you want to try, it ought to work.
+1. Agreed. That is a lot of work when you could just add some dry yeast. My situation was different because I already had a starter going for a different beer. I just wanted t pull some yeast from my starter to add at bottling. I wouldn’t have made a yeast starter just for some carbing yeast.
FWIW, the re-yeasting rate used by Sierra Nevada (1 million/mL) works out to 1 g of rehydrated dry yeast per 5-ish gal batch.
If slurry is all you have to work with, I’d go with about 1/2 tsp - maybe 1 tsp since it’s getting older.
Roger that, I’ll just do some dry yeast.
I’ll be honest, I couldn’t get a clear cut answer as to how much liquid yeast to add at bottling so I literally just shook up the starter and just poured a little bit in at bottling. No idea how much. Maybe a few tbsp worth. I’m about to pop a bottle in the fridge sometime this week to see what I got.
Glad to hear from a10t2 that there’s no chance I didn’t add enough.
