greenandgold

Recipes 

Making an Imperial Stout and the kit can with champagne yeast to add when transfering to the secondary. I left in the primary 2+ weeks and fermentation was done. Transferred to the secondary and just dropped in the package of dry yeast.

It did little as far as I can tell and only dropped the FG by a point or two down to 1.030 from original of 1.085 in the past 2 weeks.

Should I have rehydrated? Made a starter?

I'm thinking about dropping in more Champagne yeast but doing a starter first since I've still got a couple of months before bottling.

Any advice or thoughts about using a starter vs rehydrating vs adding dry?

david_42

Recipes 

Champagne yeast is there to improve the head formation, mainly. For reasons I don't understand, it makes for very small bubbles while carbonating. It will dry the ale out a little more, but it can take months as champagne yeast is very slow acting.

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PT Ray

Recipes 

With an O.G.of 1.085, any ale yeast would do all by itself, no biggy adding the champagne yeast but would refrain from any further additions. Only time I used the stuff myself was in some meads over ten years ago and those I just let them do there thing over many months before bottling. In your case I would take the same approach and work on something else in the mean time.

greenandgold

Recipes 

Thanks guys. More time it is. I'll just have to occupy myself by brewing tomorrow.

dantodd

Recipes 

As David said, I'm pretty sure the champagne yeast is primarily for the nice fine head when bottle conditioned. Not seeing your recipe I'd expect FG closer to 1.025 than 1.030