2 batches left in Primary since January...

I brewed 3 batches in late January, and then life got in the way of brewing. I was promoted at work, and have been way to busy to brew...in April I bottled the batch of DFH 60 clone...but the other 2 batches are still in primary in my closet.
I have 5 gallons of a Cold Smoke Clone (strong scottish ale), and 3.5 gallons of a Rogue Mocha Porter Clone. They have never been opened, and have good airlocks...temps were controlled in the low 60's through March...and a bit warmer since.

I plan to bottle Sunday...any guesses? I'm thinking they will be just fine....maybe a bit slow to carbonate after 6 months of yeast clearing.

Taste them. If they taste good I'd say you have no issue. When you rack I'd recommend dipping into the yeast cake for a second to pick up a little yeast to help speed up carbonation. Or you could always pitch a little fresh dry yeast in the bottle bucket.

I bet they are all fine. Stronger, darker beers will likely not have gotten worse, and might even have gotten better, with the extra few months.

Yeah I would recommend getting a single packet of pretty much any dry yeast--champagne or wine would work, but so would US-05 or whatever else you might have around--and rehydrating it as you would for a beer, then using half of that mixture in each beer. (Someone might question this, but I bet you could probably even use dry baker's yeast if you only have that--we're talking about just the amount of fermentation to provide carbing, so not virtually no character will be imparted by the new yeast.)

5ish months is a while in the primary, and for higher-alcohol beers you will have lost some yeast viability (as well as having the yeast drop out of suspension, which you can solve by mixing in a little of the cake at the bottom, as suggested). Anyway, bottom line, I think it's better to burn the $3.50 on yeast costs now rather than have 100 non-carbed bottles later.

+1 on adding dry yeast, just be sure it has less attenuation than the original yeast, or it could dry out the beer. Otherwise, it will be just fine, maybe even better with time.

I bottled a 10.5% barleywine after about 5 months in secondary without adding any yeast at bottling. It carbed up just fine despite my worries.

I love cold smoke.

Would you mind sharing the recipe?

I was just looking at cold smoke clones- let us know how this one is compared to the original.

Anyway, the beers are probably fine but may have picked up quite a yeasty flavor, which I personally don't care for.

The actual recipe from the brewery is posted on one of the Cold Smoke threads...there are only a few threads so it shouldn't be hard to find. My first attempt using the recipe as adjusted in the thread was very good, but not really a clone. My advice would be to use that recipe but re-do the calculations. The brewers recipe for 30ish barrels clearly had very high efficiency...which can be calculated because we know the final numbers for Cold Smoke from the brewery website. Adjust for your efficiency at the full batch size...then adjust the recipe down to your batch size. I would also skip the CTZ hops at 60 minutes and just use EKG for both bittering at 60 and late addition. CTZ makes sense making the huge batch...but adding 1/16 oz or whatever it worked out to in a 5 gal batch was just silly.

Still didn't get them bottled...at this point what difference does another week make..

pwkblue said:

I brewed 3 batches in late January, and then life got in the way of brewing. I was promoted at work, and have been way to busy to brew...in April I bottled the batch of DFH 60 clone...but the other 2 batches are still in primary in my closet.
I have 5 gallons of a Cold Smoke Clone (strong scottish ale), and 3.5 gallons of a Rogue Mocha Porter Clone. They have never been opened, and have good airlocks...temps were controlled in the low 60's through March...and a bit warmer since.

Click to expand...

I'm in the same position. Life got in the way and I now have 25 gallons ready to bottle; the youngest of which is 5 months old. 6.5 gallons Saison, 6.5 gallons IPA, 5 gallons Brett, and 7 gallons of Lambic. I have no worries for any of the beers, but will be adding some yeast at bottling to ensure carbonation.

Pitched some stored PacMan into a starter last weekend that I'm going to build up to brew with. Going to make extra to use some for the bottling.