Comments on the re-ferment, re-bottle experiment I am about to undertake

After several unsuccessful attempts to achieve carbonation of a vanilla porter I've officially become desperate...in spite of the sage advice I received from the forum. I have tried shaking the bottles, warmer temps, shaking again, carb drops, shaking again. And when I was done with all that I shook 'em up again. Still flat. This all over the course of five months. My yeasties must be kaput.

I don't want to throw the remainder out, so, I figured I would open the remaining bottles (36) and risk infection and/or oxidation, send it all back to the fermenter, re-pitch yeast, ferment all that priming sugar out of there, and re-bottle.

That said, I have a couple of questions for the experts:

1. I had originally use Wyeast 1056 for this batch, but was thinking of using US-05 for this since it's cheap. Is that a bad move or should I stick with the original brand of yeast?

2. How much of the yeast should I pitch? If the 1056 should I make a starter? If the US-05, should I pitch the entire package or only part?

3. Has anyone ever done this before and what were the final results?

Thanks all for those that guided me as I struggled through this one. At least the DFH 60 clone I just popped open last night came out great!

05 will be fine

When I bottle and add new yeast I use about 1/3 of the dry yeast packet.

If you decide to use the liquid yeast you shouldnt have to make a starter.


A third option for you, if you are currently brewing something take some of the krausen off of the beer and use that.

I would avoid taking them out of the bottle if possible. Use a pipette, if you can get ahold of something that would function as one. Rehydrate your dry yeast with about 50 mL of water and try to aliquot about 1 mL in each bottle. You should have enough residual sugar for it to work.

In a pinch, you could use a straw to aliquot, but I'm not sure how you would determine your volumes.

kevmoron said:

In a pinch, you could use a straw to aliquot, but I'm not sure how you would determine your volumes.

Click to expand...

Here's an idea...

Take a straw and dunk it it liquid, put your thumb over the end and measure how much you capture. When you have determined the proper volume mark a line on the straw. Fill a tall vessel with the yeast mix, then drop the straw that far in and cover the end with your thumb. It should be consistent enough for this exercise.