How Long Will Yeast Remain Viable in Aging Beer?

I have an RIS that has been in secondary for a little over 2 months. How long can I let it go before I have to pitch new yeast at bottling time? If I have to re-pitch, what is a good strain for bottle conditioning?

It depends on ABV. For a RIS, your yeast will crap out sooner than in something like a dry stout. If your ABV is over 9%, you'll probably want to pitch a small amount of yeast at bottling time. Woodlandbrew has a great write-up on it at his site, complete with handy charts.

As for a bottling strain, you'll want something alcohol-tolerant and flavor-neutral. I had a barleywine that I repitched with Lavlin EC-1118 (champagne yeast) that turned out nicely. I used maybe 1/5 to a 1/4 of the packet.

Thanks for sharing that link, it's definitely bookmark worthy. I will go with the champagne yeast since it looks like whatever yeast went secondary is dead or will die soon.