Question about bottling.

[jaycee]

Hello All
Just a quick one - My first A.G is into it's last week before i bottle it.
I had a look and taste of it today and it tastes great.
It looks quite bright and tastes pretty flat. My question is, do you think there will be enough yeast left in the beer to prime?
Should i be adding a little when i add the priming sugar?
Thanks in advance Jaycee.

[jaycee]

Cheers DaaB , How much of a 12g sachet, should i add it now or when i add the sugar?
Thanks in advance for the help.

[Iank]

I'm in a similar situation.
Yesterday I bottled my first AG (Blencathra Best). It was fermented with S04. OG 1.042, FG 1.007. This was after 11 days in the FV. Beer was great tasting but pretty bright. Not crystal-clear, but bright. As per Daab's FAQ I added 80g of priming sugar (boiled up in 150ml water then cooled) to the FV, stirred gently, left it 30 mins or so then bottled.

Question is, given the low FG, and the clarity of the beer, is there a risk of it not carbonating? If so is it practicable to open them up and put some yeast in?

Or am I just worrying unnecessarily?

[macleanb]

I think it would have to be very bright indeed for this to be an issue (5g in 100 litres is pretty bright). I am sure she'll be fine - looking forward to getting my laughing gear round some - roll on 4 weeks...

[Iank]

Thanks yes it was more whether to add yeast at this stage having now bottled it, or wait. I'll sit tight.
I'll do a PET bottle next time so I can give it a squeeze

I did use one Newcastle Brown bottle (keeping nicely dark) so I can more easily see what's going on.

[clogwog]

I never bottle before a minimum of two weeks in the fermenter. I've never had a problem.

My last lager, a Märzen, was in the fermenter for 3 weeks, then racked and lagered for 6 weeks at 2ºC. It carbed up fine without any additions.

Unless you filter your beer, you will always have enough yeast to carb up your bottles.

[steve_flack]

Additionally , on very strong beers (>5-6%) the yeast will be pretty knackered and it's probably safest to add fresh yeast. It's the standard thing to do in Belgium. I recently did the calcs to work out how much yeast to add to a batch.

According to Jamil Zainasheff, dried yeast contain approx 20 billion cells per gramme. Most brewers bottle condition with between 1-3 million cells per ml of beer (Sierra Nevada use 2 million in their pale ale so we'll go with that).

So

20L of beer is 20,000ml and we need 2 million cells in each ml

= 40 billion cells in a 20L batch.

= 2g of rehydrated dried yeast assuming 100% viability.

T-58 apparently works well for this job and I've used US-05 and it seems to work nicely. You don't need to bottle condition with same yeast as you used in the primary.

[booldawg]

Whats the best way to introduce fresh yeast to a beer for priming purposes? I recall reading somewhere that yeast need to build up a tolerance to alchohol (which obviously isnt a problem when introduced to un-fermented wort)

This is something I'll be needing to do in a few months time to prime a Barley Wine that is 9.9% (currently in 2 x 5L demijohns and will be bottled)

[Aleman]

The German brewers do it using a speise wort. That is they take some wort from the fermenting batch and add it to the beer to be bottled . . . The amount of speise used depends on the gravity of the fermenting wort, and how carbonated they want the bottled beer.

Edit: Of course this only works well if you are regularly brewing the same beer

[hoppingMad]

I vote for no yeast added. There's always enough for bottle conditioning.

[nobby]

I always leave 2 weeks before bottling and use Nottingham Yeast. Like others never had a problem. I use about 60 Grams of Glucose in 25 Ltrs of beer. I always added it at least 8 hours before bottling.

To be honest you dont want too much gas in your bottled beer. You will loose the malt flavours. When I open my beer I pour from a hight into a big jug and let if froth up.

[hoppingMad]

To be honest you dont want too much gas in your bottled beer. You will loose the malt flavours.

I wholeheartedly agree, this is a topic I've been ranting on about lately, and one which I think is under emphasised.
Once I discovered my sin of over carbonation, with my remaining bottles I would pour, like you, into a jug, a very cold one, even frozen, then wait a few minutes and pour gently into the glass. A certain amout of flavour would return but nowhere near all of it.
The resulting head however is thick, creamy and longlasting.

As a result of this over carbonation in several batches I did some reading on carbonation calculations, volumes of CO2 etc and of course it all started to make sense that the amount of disolved CO2 still in the beer at bottling was relative to the gravity at racking, the temperature of lagering etc. etc. and MUST be factored into the priming calculation.

[Redbloke]

I always leave 2 weeks before bottling and use Nottingham Yeast. Like others never had a problem. I use about 60 Grams of Glucose in 25 Ltrs of beer. I always added it at least 8 hours before bottling.

Interesting stuff, why 8 hours before bottling, will the glucose and yeast not do the job for you in the bottle?

[anomalous_result]

I think it's more to make sure that the sugar has diffused around the brew rather than just being sat on the bottom.

[daran]

Can you guys point me in the right direction for a decent bottling primer, preferably written in the language of the idiot. I'm not getting the bottling results that I'd like - e.g. too much residue, some beer is flat, some is sour, sometimes a combination of all. I think I'm doing something fundamentally wrong so if there is a Duffers Guide that would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

T