kanta

Recipes 

I have an Imperial Stout that's been in primary since 3 weeks ago or so...gravity seems stable, and I was planning on racking to secondary and adding oak chips that have been soaking in a single malt speyside scotch since the day I started the fermentation. I was planning on letting the whole mess stay in secondary until around Thanksgiving or so, then bottling and I figured I'd see if they were ready to hand out around Christmas or so (I think they'd make great Christmas presents).

My question is: Will the yeast survive all that alcohol for that long and still be able to carb in the bottles? I mean, this is going to be in the neighblorhood of 9-10% I'm guessing and it's going to have been sitting for 4 months in secondary/bottles by the time it's done. Do the yeast just go dormant and then wake up when you give them fresh sugar? for carbing? Thanks.

rexbanner

Recipes 

As long as you used a yeast with 75% attenuation, use champagne yeast to carb it.

Also be careful with the oak/scotch. Might want to do it to half, and blend to taste.

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TyTanium

Recipes 

That should be ok, but they may take a while to carb up. You could just add a touch of fresh yeast at bottling.

Also, not sure I'd leave oak chips in there for a few months. B/c of more surface area, they can turn it into woodchip beer pretty quickly. What I've always done with oak chips is given them a week, then sampled every few days (yum), and bottled when it's just oakier than I want it...usually 10-12 days. The remainder of the conditioning occurs in the bottle.

HawksBrewer

Recipes 

I would absolutely not leave the beer on oak chips for months on end. A week or two is generally plenty to get the oak flavor you are looking for, and anything more can ruin the beer (think licking an oak tree). A small amount of oak cubes would be a different story, but I would reconsider the length of time on oak chips.

Instead of bulk aging, you can always do your oak now and then bottle and forget about them.

HawksBrewer

Recipes 

Ha, good work TyTanium. Way to answer the question while I was still typing. At least we agreed on info though.

kanta

Recipes 

Ok, so essentially, since the aging process is the same whether in a bottle or a carboy, I will get the same results for aging if I only flavor in secondary for a week and then bottle?

TyTanium

Recipes 

Not the same (you can search aging in bottle vs carboy), but very similar. And far more convenient, IMO (frees up carboy, sample over time, no over-oaking, etc)

kanta

Recipes 

Hmm, saw an older post by Revvy and an excerpt from Palmer...looks like maybe I should secondary for a couple of months and then add the scotch and chips for a week, then bottle and let it carb up. Not horribly worried about freeing the carboy, I have 2, and Austin Homebrew is 15 minutes away if I want to buy more

TyTanium

Recipes 

That works too. Sounds like a good schedule.

ReverseApacheMaster

Recipes 

The yeast will probably take a long time to carb the bottles if you don't add fresh yeast. Another thing to consider is after all that aging you will lose a bit of CO2 in suspension over time and you'll need to add more priming sugar to compensate for lost CO2.