How do y’all prefer to add yeast at bottling. I never have but plan to today as this beer has been casked and aged. Last cask beer did not carbonate well at all.
Add a little to each bottle? Or to the keg before bottling. Used the kegs for dry hopping.
i cant remember a time when i did add yeast before bottling, but have im certain and i added ~ a half pack of wine yeast to the carboy and stirred it in. ive never done the bottle by bottle thing for anything, carbing. it seems crazily inefficient to me.
I usually use a bottling bucket and add the yeast there along with the priming. So i gues I prefer to eo it in bulk rather than by the bottle
That’s my method, too - it seems simpler. But adding the sugar to each bottle allows you to skip one transfer - could be an advantage in minimizing oxygen.
If you already use kegs you are better off using them to bottle the beer than a bottling bucket, then just add the yeast and priming sugar to the keg (and purge then rock or shake to mix). Much less oxidation pick up. Plus pushing with co2 for bottling is super easy. FYI a standard racking cane will fit snuggly inside a picknic tap.
Yep
I like to add a concentrated fermenting sugar solution to an aged beer before bottling. Milk the Funk describes how to do it. A delayed fermentation in bottles causes more oxidation (and overcarbonation) then a transfer due to the length of exposure in bottle so a transfer is fine, but I do a transfer to a purged keg usually because my barrel projects are typically group projects at another location.
I do this, also. It works fine.
I always bottle from the plastic conical, for BBL aged beers I CO2 purge the FV, push the beer from the BBL to the FV with CO2, add the priming, stir well and then purge as best I can the headspace in the FV. I usually prime with spiese, and regardless of whether I’m adding yeast or relying on still active yeast in the beer, I mix either the spiese or sugar with ~ 2 qts of the beer in a starter jug with an airlock to make sure all systems are go before bottling. More often than not I do this the evening before bottling day as it normally takes until the next morning before definite signs of fermentation are evident, but that of course can vary from beer to beer.
I generally add to the bottling bucket as I rack in but I’ve added dry yeast bottle by bottle with equal success.
IMO the issue isn’t any particular way to add yeast but adding enough sugar to ensure you end up with sufficient carbonation. Carbonation calculators assume a volume of dissolved CO2 that isn’t in beers aged for a long period of time or aged in porous vessels like barrels. For beers aged more than a year I usually go 1.5-2 oz/gal of priming sugar to get around 3 volumes of CO2 (for sour and brett beers). If kegging equipment is available to you it would be way easier to rack into the keg, force carb and bottle.