Yeast in bottled wheat beer

I usually let my beers sit in fermenters for several weeks and reyeast when bottling. I'm planning my first wheat beer (leaning towards a dunkelweizen) and would like some advice on how to proceed. I generally do the main fermentation with a liquid yeast and bottle with a dry (US-05 or Nottingham).

I'm thinking that since the yeast is an important part of the finished product that I may not want to bottle with a different yeast. Should I keep the primary fermentation shorter and not reyeast? or if I let the fermentation go longer should I bottle with dry wheat strain?

you re-yeast after weeks? Stop That!

When your beer sits for 6 months before you bottle....then add yeast. when it's been 2 or 3 or 6 weeks...stop that.

I would use 3068 yeast and bottle after a week or 2...just make sure that the gravity is stable.

Have you tried using priming sugar at bottling rather than re-introducing yeast? I have never 're-yeasted', but when I bottle I always use priming sugar for carbonation and it has no impact on the yeast characteristics.

Having said that, if you want to use Notty in bottles you'll be fine. It won't take away from any of the banana/clove phenols of the Dunkel.

If bottling with yeast works for you, then more power to ya.

BigKahuna said:

you re-yeast after weeks? Stop That!

When your beer sits for 6 months before you bottle....then add yeast. when it's been 2 or 3 or 6 weeks...stop that.

I would use 3068 yeast and bottle after a week or 2...just make sure that the gravity is stable.

Click to expand...

3068 is a great hefe-style yeast, very fast and tasty even with a small starter.

BigKahuna said:

you re-yeast after weeks? Stop That!

When your beer sits for 6 months before you bottle....then add yeast. when it's been 2 or 3 or 6 weeks...stop that.

I would use 3068 yeast and bottle after a week or 2...just make sure that the gravity is stable.

Click to expand...

I agree 100%. I'm currently 5 days into a dunkelweizen using Wyeast 3068 @ 68F. I plan on bottling next Sunday (14 days) straight from the primary. Even after 5-8 weeks in primaries/clearing tanks, I still have viable yeast to induce carbonation when I prime.

The only reason a lot of Belgian breweries bottle with a lager yeast is because this gives them more control over bottle conditioning. I also think they don't want us getting our dirty hands on their yeast strains.

Thanks for the advice. For the record I'll be using White Labs WLP300.