Just curious how a yeast ring ends up in bottled beer? Considering you siphon out only the beer and try to avoid sucking up the trub. Is the yeast present throughout and it simply settles again in the bottle?
The yeast usually settles and compacts at the bottom of the bottle. Is this a bottle you opened and tasted? A ring at the top of the beer is usually not a great sign, could be infected:(
+1 This is what I’ve heard too. How does it taste?
Yes, im talking about on the bottom.
If you are bottle conditioning you will have yeast in the bottle. Even Sierra Nevada has yeast in the bottle. The carbonation process will need yeast and the yeast will settle out once it is finished. Unless you are filtering you are not removing all the yeast. And if you did remove all the yeast the beer wouldn’t carbonate.
You’re not drinking homebrewed beer from the bottle, I hope… 
Not in a long time…although I did give my brother a bottle of Westy 12 and he drank it right out of the bottle :o
I get yeast rings in my highly carbonated beers. I’m pretty sure it’s actually kraeusen. Some strains are stickier than others. I use Premier Cuvee now to bottle condition, since it’s less sticky than others. I can usually shake the bottle up a little and the ring will break up and settle down. Some yeasts are sticky enough the ring won’t break up.
I talked to a brewer from Montreal who said that if you are “doing it right” then you can bottle condition with little enough yeast that you won’t have any visible when it is done. He said he gave a talk to that effect in Canada, possibly at the Mondial de la biere, I don’t really remember. Anyway, the take away was that the amount of yeast you actually need to carbonate your beer is little enough that it doesn’t need to be visible when it is done. I’m sure it requires tight control though.
As a consumer, I’d rather have a bit of yeast in the bottom than variation in carbonation levels.
It would be cool to see tests done on minimum pitching rates for bottle conditioning.
I’ve always wondered if really low pitch rates at bottling would result in similar off-flavors as during primary (acetaldehyde?), or if extremely high rates would give yeast autolysis.
Even after a few months of aging in a carboy, some yeast cells are still suspended in the beer.
I reyeast every batch now. I made a batch of bourbon porter without reyeasting, that never carbonated. It’s about a year old now, and they’re almost all flat still. Only a couple of them carbed up, and I suspect it’s because they got infected with wild yeast.
Yeah. OK. But there aren’t many homebrewers who are pulling that off. I’d be willing to say there are close enough to “zero” homebrewers pulling that off as close enough to count as “zero”. And I never got a commercially bottle conditioned beer that was yeast free, so I guess I’m not buying that one.
I’m thinking that for this to work you would need to filter all the yeast out first, then add back a small measured amount. Otherwise you really have no control of how much yeast you have in suspension. And I don’t really know why as a homebrewer you’d bother going through all that hassle if you’re just going to end up bottle conditioning anyways.