Instant baker's yeast to bottle condition?

Let's say one was feeling reeaaaalllyyy lazy and didn't want to go to the brewing store just to pick up some yeast. Also imagine that one has 5 gallons of berliner weisse sitting around desperately wanting to be bottled, but it has been in the secondary for 3 or 4 months and all the yeasties are probably dead. Finally, let's pretend there is huge amount of instant dry baker's yeast sitting around in one's fridge.

Not saying it's me we're talking about here, but theoretically, what would happen if one tried to bottle carb a beer with instant baker's yeast? Should be ok no?

I would just bottle as is. The yeasts should be alive still. If people can grow yeasts from commercial bottlers then there's no reason why yours would be dead (unless you pasteurized your beer...)

FatherJack said:

I would just bottle as is. The yeasts should be alive still. If people can grow yeasts from commercial bottlers then there's no reason why yours would be dead (unless you pasteurized your beer...)

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They might be but there's no guarantee. I actually once had yeast die on me after 5 weeks in the primary... perhaps unusual but not unheard of. The yeast in question have been sitting under booze at room temperature for 5 months, I think it's recommended to add bottling yeast at this point.

How do you know your yeast "died" after 5 weeks in primary??

Yeast doesn't die, unless you drop it in boiling water or the beer freezes solid. What lead you to believe your yeast actually died?

I've had beer in primary for 6 months that carbed fine without needing to add any yeast.

New brewers tend to think yeast is this frail thing, the weak link in the chain, when in reality it's one of the strongest. If 45 million year old yeast can be harvested from a dollop of amber and a batch of beer fermented with it, why would folks think their yeast can easily die? Usually folks who claim their yeast is dead are just impatient for letting the yeast take their own time. They try to impose their own time frames or behaviors onto the yeast.

Bakers yeast isn't packaged under the same uber-sanitary conditions that brewers yeast is packaged with, there are all kinds of bugs on that yeast that you might not want in a crisp/clean sour beer like a Berliner Weisse. Pick up some new brewers yeast if you feel the need to re-yeast your beer before packaging.

The last thing I'll say just echo's what's been said above, your yeast is likely fine. I'd just bottle as is.

Revvy said:

How do you know your yeast "died" after 5 weeks in primary??

Yeast doesn't die, unless you drop it in boiling water or the beer freezes solid. What lead you to believe your yeast actually died?

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I think that's a bit of an overstatement. Empirical evidence led me to believe it in this case. I bottled 5 gallons of deadguy clone, and started checking carbonation after three weeks. There was none. None after 5 weeks, none after 7 weeks, and at two months I thought it was time to stop waiting and I opened them all and sprinkled a few grains of EC-1118 into each bottle and recapped. Mind you not a single one of the bottles I opened had that hiss of escaping pressure. Then, two weeks after adding the 1118, behold carbonated deadguy clone. If the yeast weren't dead, they may as well have been. Zero carbonation in a standard gravity ale after 2 months (bottles kept at room temperature, >70 degrees) makes me think the yeasties died some how. I don't have an explanation for it either, seems that somehow they didn't survive the 5 week primary. I had no bottle bombs after adding the 1118 so I figure the beer had to have been done, not just stalled. Yes, there could be another explanation. Perhaps if I waited 6 months it would have eventually carbonated, but the beer would have been past it's prime as well.

wyzazz said:

Bakers yeast isn't packaged under the same uber-sanitary conditions that brewers yeast is packaged with, there are all kinds of bugs on that yeast that you might not want in a crisp/clean sour beer like a Berliner Weisse.

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Touche.

I'd go to the LHBS to get proper brewers yeast, 4 months is a lot of time invested that I wouldn't want to jeopardize.

With that said, definitely siphon off a sixer and sprinkle some of the instant bakers yeast in for science.

hmmm? Was there some yeast killing sanitizerin the bottles?

My biggest concern in adding a different strain of yeast would be resuming fermentation with something that is more asgressive and creating bottle bombs. For instance, say the original yeast attenuates 85% of the fermentable sugars in the primary You then add a known quantity of sugar for carbing and cap. No trouble. However, if at bottling you add prime sugar and a yeast that ferments 95%, the bottling yeast will eat all the priming sugar and some of the remaining wort sugar, possibly overpressurizing. I have never needed to add yeast at bottling, although I understand some commercial breweries do it. Is it possible that in the racking process you accidently filtered the yeast out?

Of course yeast die...Why would smack packs have a "best by" date. I have tried culturing from old smack packs and have not had good success.
Yeast have a life cycle, many of the yeast that begin fermentation don't live to end of same fermentation.

I found a 3 year old White Labs vial buried in my fridge the other day. It was a platinum series, so I decided "what the hell" I'll throw it in a starter and see what happens. Needless to say, after 4 days on a stir plate the gravity remained the same and all I ended up with was a thin layer of dead brown yeasties at the bottom of the flask. Yeast do die, the scientists at White Labs and Wyeast know this, that's why they have expiration dates on the packaging. That said, there is always a slim chance one or two cells might survive for an extended period, which is why some people can grow starters after their yeast has been a year in the fridge, but it's a crap shoot at best. This is also why the yeast viability on Mr. Malty and YeastCalc never drops below 1%.

bighorn_brew said:

Of course yeast die...Why would smack packs have a "best by" date. I have tried culturing from old smack packs and have not had good success.
Yeast have a life cycle, many of the yeast that begin fermentation don't live to end of same fermentation.

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Actually I've had totally totally different results, and I'm not the only one.....Bobby M did a test on year old stored yeast here; https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/testing-limits-yeast-viability-126707/

And my LHBS cells outdated tubes and packs of yeast dirt cheap 2-3 dollars each and I usually grab a couple tubes of belgian or other interesting yeast when I am there and shove it in my fridge. and I have never had a problem with one of those tubes.

I usually make a starter but I once pitched a year old tube of Belgian High Gravity yeast directly into a 2.5 gallon batch of a Belgian Dark Strong, and after about 4 days it took off beautifully.
The purpose of a starter is to reproduce any viable cells in a batch of yeast....that;s how we can grow a starter form the dregs in a bottle of beer incrementally...and that beer may be months old.

Even if you have a few still living cells, you can grow them....That's how we can harvest a huge starter (incrementally) from the dregs in a bottle of some commercial beers. You take those few living cells and grow them into more.

*shrug*


I didn't see yeast don't die, I said it's a lot less common than most new brewers believe it is. Noobs think if their airlock stops bubbling the yeast has died. Or that if you cold crash they die....In reality it takes a lot more to kill them off than most folks think.