Extra yeast at bottling

Would you add more yeast to a BDS that’s been in the fermenter for 2 months and its about 8.5% ABV ?

It probably isn’t necessary, but it wouldn’t hurt to add 1/2 pack of rehydrated dry yeast.

I’ll add fresh yeast for any beer I want to carb up consistently and quickly. I recommend Red Star’s Premier Cuvee or EC-1118 for bottle conditioning. Use the whole pack, they’re super cheap. I’ll use two packs (10g) if I’m targeting over 3 volumes in a fairly strong beer.

It seems like the amount of sugar, not yeast, should make the difference.  If you actually get more carbonation from more yeast, that might point to incomplete fermentation before bottling.

BTW, I’ve heard that several commercial breweries use T-58 for bottling.  There’s such a small amount of fermentation that you don’t get any flavor from it and it forms a very compact yeast cake on the bottom if the bottle.

I’m not saying more yeast = more carbonation. Bottle conditioning to high levels of CO2 in high alcohol beer is stressful on yeast. It’s common practice to use more yeast in a stressful environment than a less stressful environment. I assume the same logic holds when bottle conditioning.

FWIW Lalvin’s recommended dosage for bottle conditioning sparkling wines is about 10g per 20L, or 2 packs per 5 gallons.

Got it…thanks for the explanation!

I made an RIS last year that was ~10% ABV. Some of the bottles never fully carbed, and most of them took 4-6 weeks to carb up, and I was only targeting 2 volumes. I brewed an 11% ABV saison this year. I added two packs of rehydrated premier cuvee, and they all hit 5 volumes within 2 weeks. So now it’s become my SOP to add wine yeast when priming any beer where the primary yeast may not be in optimal health anymore.

This is good info. I’m due to bottle my barleywine soon. I’ll definitely be grabbing some red star or ec1118 for carbonation insurance. Thanks

Anyone have good luck with champagne yeast for bottling beers? What’s a good target carb level for an 8% farmhouse?

Yes, that’s what we’re talking about. EC 1118 is a sparkling wine yeast.

I’d go with 4-5 volumes, as long as your bottles can handle it. “Regular” brown bombers and longnecks are only good to about 3 volumes.

Good to know. Thanks!

Also, FWIW not all yeast from the province of Champagne is ideal for sparkling wine production. Red Star’s Pasteur Champagne, for instance, is just a wine yeast from Champagne, but is not a sparkling wine yeast. There is also a distinction between “sparkling wine base” yeast and “secondary fermentation” yeast. EC-1118 or Premier Cuvee are the best for “secondary fermentation” (bottle conditioning). It is a fast, neutral fermenter with low nutritional requirements.

AFAIK EC 1118 and Premier Cuvee are the same, or at least very similar strains.

I know this is a few months old but I am in the process of working all this out as well. I am working on a 10.5% Belgian Quad for next Christmas. I usually keg everything but I want to give this as gifts next year so I want to bottle and cork. I have been reading (a lot) over the last few weeks (thanks Denny for the great posts from your quad adventures last year) and think I have come to the decision to re-ferment in the bottle with the same yeast used for primary.

Here’s my plan…

Pitch primary following mr malty calc
After primary cold crash (mid to low 30’s) to get as much yeast out of suspension as possible.
Rack to better bottle with racking adaptor installed to bottle
Pitch aprox 2 million cells per milliliter (aprox 30-40% of a WL vial) and sugar to hit 3 - 3.5 vols.
Bottle and cork
Store in fermentation fridge for 2 weeks @ 77deg.
Store in a dark corner of the basement (65 - 68 deg) for 10 months (if I can keep my hands off)

or…

Instead of racking to another carboy to bottle from why not use a keg??
Purge with co2 as normal. Add the sugar and yeast to the keg and then rack the beer. Close the keg and mix well. Then use a counter pressure filler or beer gun to fill the bottles.

Adding another vial of yeast will add $7.00 to the cost of the batch but I figured for something that I brew only on very special occasion is worth it.

Any advice would be helpful.

A gram or 2 of US-05 would do the trick. 20 billion cells per gram. I store the rest in a new small ziploc bag until I brew again.

I’m with Jeff.  I used 05 for my quad when I bottled.  Works fine and there’s no advantage to using the primary strain unless you happen to have it around like breweries do.

If you’re buying it for this purpose, I’d use something more flocculant than US-05, personally. Maybe S-04 or the aforementioned T-58.

If you go with EC-1118 or some other sparkling wine yeast for beer bottle conditioning, do those yeast strains work on the same sugars as the lager/ale yeasts?  In other words, do you need to worry about getting more carbonation out than you were expecting for the same amount of priming sugar?

I don’t think it would be the priming sugar you would need to worry about, rather the other unfermented sugars already there in the beer.

I think that is what he meant. As far as I know, wine yeasts are not good at fermenting the complex sugars in barley wort. so I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. they will ferment out the simple priming sugar easily but I don’t think they will touch the malt sugars. I could be wrong though.

Only K1V-1116 (AFAIK) will touch complex malt sugars (like maltotriose). I use wine yeasts for my sour beers for this reason.