I plan on using a recipe from Clone Brews by the Szamatulski’s. The recipe calls for adding a second dose of the same yeast strain (as used in the primary) into the secondary, three days before bottling. I’ve never come across this instruction before. If I use a starter, is this step necessary (the OG is 1.086)?
My guess is the author added it to ensure there was enough yeast to allow for bottle conditioning.
And adding it 3 days before bottling would do you no good at all. Man, I hate that book!
+1.
The key is that your OG indicates that you have a bigger beer than the yeast may be able to carbonate with merely adding priming sugar (bigger beers are sometimes fermented longer, so there may be less residual yeast in suspension with your 1.086 beer at the time you proceed to bottle). Also with much bigger beers, the starting yeast may die from the higher alcohol levels, rather than attenuating fully, but I don’t see that occurring here.
Everyone above is expressing frustration with some of the “outdated/out wrong to begin with information” that remains pervasive in home brewing literature. There are great sources and there are less than great sources. The AHA has a great selection, though. I, too, found the clone books interesting at first when I began homebrewing, but I realized that some clone recipes were not very close to the commercial brew and the process described was a bit dated and not so helpful in brewing the particular beer. Even so, adding yeast 3 days before bottling serves no worthwhile purpose, as far as I can determine.