Add additional yeast before bottling in Hennepin Clone

I have a hennepin clone in secondary (has been there for almost 2 months).
It finished fermenting somewhat slowly (high ABV) around a month ago. I used a culture of actual ommegang yeast, which seemed to ferment everything very well, but I'm worried that it won't have enough umph to completely carbonate it in the bottle.
I would rather not have to buy yeast but I'm wondering if I can rely on the cultured hennepin yeast to do the job.
Could I resuspend some of the sediment to get more yeast into the bottles, or is most of the living yeast in suspension anyway?

Thanks for any suggestions/ideas you have!

You should be fine unless you have reached the alcohol capability of the yeast. If you are under 10%, you should not have a problem, and may be fine above that.

Cool, thanks! I'll try it out today hopefully.

I was at Ommegang brewery a few weeks ago and they don't re-pitch when they bottle. Giving the sediment a little stir before racking to the bottling vessel isn't a bad idea. It will all settle out in the bottles anyway.

The Hennepin was my favorite at the tasting. i bought an eight-pack there and still have the two bottles of Three Philosophers in the fridge. The Witte, Hennepin and Rare Vos are gone. I need to have a day where it doesn't matter that I'm drunk for the 10+% Three Philosophers. Cooperstown is a pretty cool place to visit if you're into beer and baseball.

Can you share the recipe, or point me to it? I'll have to culture some yeast as well. When I asked they said they don't sell their yeast, but they have a lab where they culture their own.

Mind sharing the recipe? Love Hennepin and have been debating doing that on my next Saison.

zacster said:

I was at Ommegang brewery a few weeks ago and they don't re-pitch when they bottle. Giving the sediment a little stir before racking to the bottling vessel isn't a bad idea. It will all settle out in the bottles anyway.

The Hennepin was my favorite at the tasting. i bought an eight-pack there and still have the two bottles of Three Philosophers in the fridge. The Witte, Hennepin and Rare Vos are gone. I need to have a day where it doesn't matter that I'm drunk for the 10+% Three Philosophers. Cooperstown is a pretty cool place to visit if you're into beer and baseball.

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thats funny i just watched a video where they said they top-crop the krausen from every batch and save it to repitch for bottling.

i wonder if they changed their process since then, i think the video was a couple years old.

Maybe not every tour guide knows everything they do. By the time we went through the tour they had already shut down the bottling line for the day so it wasn't visible what they do.

mewithstewpid said:

thats funny i just watched a video where they said they top-crop the krausen from every batch and save it to repitch for bottling.

i wonder if they changed their process since then, i think the video was a couple years old.

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Do the filter or centrifuge? If they do they'd need to add some yeast back, or krausen it.

ChillWill said:

Do the filter or centrifuge? If they do they'd need to add some yeast back, or krausen it.

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no, they dont.

I found this article on BYO about it (its old, tho, from 2000):

http://byo.com/stories/techniques/article/indices/14-bottling/1212-on-the-yeast-guide-to-bottle-conditioning

Here is a quote from the brewer of ommegang at the time (Now its Phil Leinhart)

"Yeast for bottle conditioning is your next concern, says Randy Thiel, the head brewer at Ommegang. Thiel explains that the yeast used during primary fermentation of strong Belgian brews —above 15° Plato or 1.060 original gravity — gets beat up during fermentation and will be of little value during bottle conditioning. If you condition your beer at least two weeks before bottling, most of this old yeast will drop out of suspension. Then you can add new yeast."

I wouldn't be as concerned about the yeast viability as I would the amount of CO2 left in suspension. After a couple of months, if that beer was kept in the 70s or higher, probably lost a good chunk of CO2 and might need some extra priming sugar.