Bottle Conditioning question

General Homebrew Discussion
1

I typically keg my beers and use a beer gun to bottle for competitions. Right now, I’ve got a few different small batches of Belgian beers that  I want to bottle for a competition coming up. I don’t want to keg a 1 gallon batch and then transfer to bottle. Anyways, my question is do I need to add yeast to these beers at bottling? They’ve both fermented out totally and have been transferred to secondaries and have been sitting in my beer refrigerator at around 35F for about 2 weeks. My concern is most of the yeast has dropped out. Below are the specs on the 2 beers.

  • Belgian Dark Strong-  BE-256 dry yeast- OG 1.102 / FG 1.012
  • Saison- Bells Saison dry yeast- OG 1.072 / FG 0.998 (i know this got out of hand for a saison!)

thanks for any advice

2

You don’t need to add yeast. When I used to bottle, I had success with lagers that had been at 33F for 6 weeks.  There’s always yeast in solution if you haven’t filtered.  You can add yeast if you’re scared; it won’t hurt.

3

I’ll contradict the experts on this one, having had a few brews recently that were bottled more than a week after active fermentation ended, and subsequently failed to properly ferment the priming sugars. My suggestion is draw off enough for one bottle, add an appropriate amount of sugar and stick an airlock on the bottle for a couple days to ensure your yeast is up to the job. If it is, proceed with bottling, if nothing happens, you probably need to add some active yeast.

4

I’m not sure lager yeast will have been put through the same onslaught as a 1.100+ Belgian strong though.  I also find the abbey strains get pretty lazy if the temperature drops at all; it’s a one way street with them.  I can see why many of the Belgian breweries have a very warm conditioning room, and/or repitch for bottling.  The only dubious carbonation periods I’ve encountered have been with abbey strains in relatively big beers, where I’ve needed them to condition at a slightly lower temperature than they finished at before bottling.  As per my discussion in a similar thread, I’m thinking of adding a touch of rehydrated yeast in my current tripel.