Boy it seems the questions never end. Everyday I have more. So I am glad you all are here!
Tomorrow I am going to do two things I haven’t done before. Add cold-extracted coffee to my milk stout, and bottle a Baltic Porter.
For adding coffee: The primary fermentation is done including a diacetyl rest. I intend to put the coffee in the keg, and then transfer from the carboy onto the coffee. Should I put it in the house at 70* so the yeast can handle the oxygen introduced via the coffee, or go straight to cold conditioning at ~34*? OR, should I just go straight to cold conditioning, and wait til I’m ready to bottle it and add the coffee and priming sugar at the same time? OR, add the coffee and priming sugar tomorrow, bring the bottles inside to 70*, then after a couple of weeks cold condition then in the bottle?
On bottling the Baltic Porter (fermented with lager yeast): I have never bottled, I have only kegged. This beer has been lagering at ~34* for 6+ weeks in the keg. Do I need to add yeast with the priming sugar? If so, how much and what kind?
you should boil and cool the water you use for steeping your coffee so the amount of o2 in there should be negligable.
I don’t think it really matters if you add the coffee now or right before bottling or if you cold condition in the keg or the bottle.
I guess if you add the coffee and let it settle for a while you could have one last chance to taste and adjust before it goes in the bottle so there is a reason to add the coffee first.
added yeast might not be needed but it’s cheap insurance, I would use half a packet of dry neutral yeast but I don’t know for lagers if you would want to user a lager yeast or an ale yeast (us-05) for that.
I wouldn’t bother boiling and cooling the water, you are just going to reintroduce air when you filter the grounds out of the toddy. Or you could use a bag and remove it, letting it drain gently. I don’t bother - I just add the toddy to the keg, then add the beer on top of it. I don’t worry about the O2 in the toddy, the beer gets consumed pretty fast anyway.
Yeast express those ale-like flavors during growth phase. In bottle conditioning, the yeast don’t have much of a growth phase, so flavor contributions should be fairly limited. A local brewer uses their wit yeast to bottle condition their sour beers, and I have never picked up yeast derived flavors (from this yeast, anyway) in them.
Use a packet of S-05, which is a fairly clean yeast. My only issue with it is that its somewhat powdery, but it’ll settle with some time in the fridge. I use dry champagne yeast for higher ABV beers.
[quote]On bottling the Baltic Porter (fermented with lager yeast): I have never bottled, I have only kegged. This beer has been lagering at ~34* for 6+ weeks in the keg. Do I need to add yeast with the priming sugar? If so, how much and what kind?
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If it’s in the keg you can force carb it and then use a beer gun to go to bottle
If you are planning on bottling the whole keg you can suck up some of the yeast cake as you rack and that should work perfectly fine. If you want to add yeast I would use the 05 as you will want to place the bottles somewhere around 70-75F for about 3 weeks to naturally carbonate. Also be sure to weigh out the priming sugar as it is more exact then measuring by cups, make a simple syrup with about 1 cup of water, pour it into the bottling bucket and rack the beer on top to self mix thoroughly.