guitar510

Recipes 

I currently have a variation on an imperial stout in my primary fermenter. I forget the OG since I'm at work, but it's high...around 1.085. The recipe I'm mimicking calls for 2 weeks primary, 2-3 months secondary and 2-4 weeks bottle. First of all, does this sound reasonable. I've never brewed a stout let alone an imperial stout.

Second, if I bottle 2.5-3.5 months in, will I still be able to carbonate by just adding priming sugar.

weirdboy

Recipes 

Sounds fine to me. For what it's worth, I think a lot of imperial stouts taste better after 6-12 months of conditioning.

Shouldn't be a problem just priming it, but if you're worried you can add some dry yeast to your bottling bucket at bottling time.

guitar510

Recipes 

I'm not worried, just curious. Is adding yeast common practice?

6-12 months bottle conditioning?

Got Trub?

Recipes 

It depends on the strength of the beer, the length of time conditioning before bottling and on how long you are willing to wait for the bottles to carb. With what you describe 1.085, 2 weeks primary and 2-3 months secondary I would not add yeast, but would expect it to take 2-3 months to fully carb in the bottles. But that is OK because as weirdboy points out this beer will be getting better with each passing month .

If you brew this again I would recommend leaving it in the primary for a month to 6 weeks before transferring it to a secondary to bulk condition. That will give the yeast enough time to finish fermenting and to clean up after themselves.

GT