How much slurry for bottle conditioning

Brewing Processes
1

I have read folks recommending a packet of dry or liquid yeast when adding fresh yeast to bottle condition.  What about yeast slurry though?  I imagine it would be a minute amount.

I have a Belgian tripel I am about to bottle.  To be safe I figured I would add some yeast along with priming sugar as it has been cold conditioning for many months now.  I was going to pitch a pack of dry us-05 but a) I am out and b) I happen to have some WLP530 slurry (which was the fermenting yeast) available at the moment.

So, how much?  Maybe 5 ml’s of solid slurry or is even that too much?

I plan on adding the yeast and priming solution to a keg and then transferring from the keg it is in now.  Then I can purge the air, and agitate to distribute the sugar and yeast well without fear of oxidation.  Then, bottle from the keg through picnic tap/racking cane setup at low pressure.

2

I did it once but made a small starter first. Worked out will with much less sediment than a pack of yeast.

3

So did you use the wort from the starter to act as the priming sugar?

4

And how much yeast did you use to make the starter?  Seems like that would create more yeast than just using a packet?

???

5

Used a 1/2 tsp of slurry and woke it up with just 100ml of slurry and cut back on the priming sugar a little.

It was a Berliner Weisse and 6.8 oz of priming sugar would give me 3.5 volumes of CO2
5.5 oz calculates out to 3 volumes.
Used 100ml 1.020 wort to get the 1/4 tsp of slurry active then added priming sugar and the active wort to the bucket and bottled.

Liked the results enough to get more scientific next time.

6

The more I think about it the more I am thinking I should just go with some dry.  My initial choice was us-05 but again, I am out, but I do have some s-04.

Might just make life simpler.  I guess I need to check the alcohol tolerance on it though.  My tripel is in the 9% range (can’t recall the exact number

7

S-04 makes a better bottling yeast anyway; it’s more flocculent. Rehydrate about a quarter of the pack and you won’t have to worry about the alcohol.

8

The rate that Sierra Nevada uses is 1 billion cells / L, and that’s to bottle condition filtered beer.  If I rinse the yeast slurry of any trub, then I usually go with 3 billion cells/mL, which is around 6-7 mL for a 5 gal batch.  If the slurry is older you’ll need more.  The tricky bit will be getting it evenly mixed in the bottling bucket.

9

Whoo!  Finally got to bottling!  Man, I have not been excited to bottle something in a long time, if not EVER!

Sadly I think I may have over done the yeast dose.  I decided to go with the s-04.  From my understanding only a 1/4 packet was necessary to pitch.  Well, I did not want to have 3/4 a pack hanging around for who knows how long, so I rehydrated the whole thing.  I figured I would just pitch 1/4 of the resulting liquid.

Well, that was kind of difficult as it rehydrated REALLY well.  Thick and foamy.  So, anyway, as mentioned in my plan I then poured the priming sugar and yeast into a sanitized keg.  I then pressurized it and transferred from the keg the tripel was in.  Rocking it every now and then to mix well.

I went from pretty much crystal clear beer from being cold condtiioned for a little over 2 months to wicked cloudy.  :frowning:

Ah well, live and learn.  It should flocculate pretty well but I anticipate a good layer of sediment.

…hopefully no bottle bombs as I did bottle a few regular long necks for possible competition purposes.  :o

10

I wouldn’t think extra yeast would account for bottle bombs unless there was enough extra sugar in the slurry being pitched.

11

Oh. that isn’t what I meant.  The reason I fear possible explosion is because I primed for 3 volumes.  I am not sure if regular 12 oz. bottles (recycled many times) are rated for that much.  Time will tell.

12

I wouldn’t worry about that. I use the 12 oz bottles at 3 vol all the time, and I accidentally primed a batch over 4 vol once. No grenades.

13

That is good to hear.  I actually may be over 3 volumes.  :-[

I adjusted for residual co2 when calculating the amount of priming sugar.  However, I had charged the keg to 30 psi when I racked it in there and there was some carbonation from that as well…

:o
8)

14

Yeah, I’ve done 3.4 a few times.  No problems.