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Craigweiser · 10-25-2011, 06:26 PM

I'm bottling a barley wine with 1.096 OG. Should I make a small starter or pitch the smack pack when inflated. Don't want too much unused yeast sitting in the bottle. Also, should I use the same yeast strain (american ale yeast) or the high gravity strain offered by wyeast?

audger · 10-25-2011, 07:30 PM

definately make a high gravity starter to get the yeast acclimated to high alcohol content before pitching them into a 10% beer. in the last barleywine i tried to bottle (~12% alcohol), i tried just using the yeast from the secondary, but it was pretty much all dead by that time and nothing carbonated.

if you want to keep the same flavor profile, use the same yeast. using different yeast (like champaigne) can eat slightly different sugars which the previous yeast may have left behind. that can change the flavor profile, or *possibly* lead to bottle bombs due to the fact that it has both priming sugar and the sugar the previous yeast left behind. (emphasis on 'possibly' because its a theory that makes sense, but ive never heard that it actually happened before.)

**bottlebomber** · 10-25-2011, 07:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by audger

definately make a high gravity starter to get the yeast acclimated to high alcohol content before pitching them into a 10% beer. in the last barleywine i tried to bottle (~12% alcohol), i tried just using the yeast from the secondary, but it was pretty much all dead by that time and nothing carbonated.

if you want to keep the same flavor profile, use the same yeast. using different yeast (like champaigne) can eat slightly different sugars which the previous yeast may have left behind. that can change the flavor profile, or *possibly* lead to bottle bombs due to the fact that it has both priming sugar and the sugar the previous yeast left behind. (emphasis on 'possibly' because its a theory that makes sense, but ive never heard that it actually happened before.)

Don't do this. You aren't going to get the yeast "acclimated" to high alcohol, you are going to grow unhealthy yeast by subjecting them to high alcohol. Yeast don't "like" alcohol, they tolerate it. By making the yeast be in a high alcohol environment, you are weakening them. Your starter should be not more than 1.040. And for a big beer like that, you are going to want at least 2 quarts of starter, grow the yeast, crash it, decant the wort and pitch the yeast

swoof · 10-25-2011, 07:49 PM

Wait, are you asking if you should make a starter for bottling? Even for a higher alcohol beer just rehydrating about 1/2 a packet of dry yeast should be enough for bottling.

**bottlebomber** · 10-25-2011, 08:52 PM

My bad, it looks like your bottling. Instead of giving us an OG let's have an alcohol %. I usually bottle with some fresh Nottingham for this kind of thing. You don't need muc maybe 1/4 packet. I usually boil my priming sugar, cool it, add it to the bottling bucket then let the yeast rehydrate on the priming sugar. Seems to work well, and I've carbed beers up to 12 abv this way in a month compared to 2-3 months that it can take for these super high gravity beers to carbonate from the latent yeast.

Craigweiser · 10-25-2011, 09:36 PM

10% abv. Probably gonna go ahead and pitch a wyeast smack pack of same yeast strain at 5 million cells per ml as suggested (or about 100 million cells in 5 gallons) by jamil z in yeast. Thanks for the advice.