I am about to bottle a clone of RR Consecration that I brewed last year and has been sitting on bacteria and wood. It was a recipe available at More Beer. Vinnie C. states that he adds champagne yeast at bottling.
I used champagne yeast once for bottling a golden strong and had bottle bombs. So I want to get this correct since I have been waiting a year.
How do you go about adding the yeast at bottling? What amount for a 5g batch? Do I rehydrate? Any other steps to take?
I am planning on using thick wall Belgian bottles. Any particular temp I should condition at?
Thanks in advance
Any yeast you add will only ferment to the extent of the sugar you add or is left in the beer. If you had bottle bombs before, it’s probably becasue you either used too much priming or the beer had unfermentables left in it. I’d use 1/4-1/2 pack of US05, in the bottling bucket. You can rehydrate or not…doesn’t really matter much.
+1 to Denny. the bottle bombs were not because you added yeast.
One benefit to using champagne yeast over us-05 is there is very little chance champagne yeast will attenuate MORE than your primary yeast in barley beer. It’s just not that good at the longer, more complex sugars.
That being said, it hardly matters in this case because your mixed yeasts and bugs will have eaten everything available and only that sugar you supply will be available.
Thanks, for the feedback. I do realize that it takes something for the yeast to eat and not the yeast alone that makes the bottle bombs. I guess I should have been a bit clearer about my question. How can I be certain that there is not enough residual sugar left? Taking a gravity reading would tell me if I hit a certain gravity which will help a bit, however most strong Belgians tend to be on the higher side of carbonation. So I guess my original thought was that by knowing approximately how much yeast should be added to a batch at bottling time I could help to minimize the issue, but maybe I am wrong.
Also would it help to condition at a colder temp (~50 deg) to slow the process down?
I know when I had the previous bottle bomb issue I took the remaining bottle and put them in the fridge which stopped the explosions.
the gravity reading is how you will know. The level of residual sugars, the types of sugars and the specific nature of the yeast in question are the factors in play here.
What was your last gravity reading? has it been stable for a while? (a couple weeks, or months when mixed cultures are in play) I’m going to guess at a gravity approaching 1.000, possibly slightly lower. if it’s much above 1.002 I would wait longer.
the amount of yeast you add and the temperature you condition at will affect the speed at which the priming sugar turns into CO2 but will not affect the amount of co2 created. That is a purely function of the amount of sugar available.
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