reintroducing yeast during bottling

So this is a question for those of us who are kegless and rely on adding priming sugar to get our cider bubbly.
Would it work if you kill off your yeast at a higher SG and keep it sweeter and then add a little bit of yeast along with a lower amount of priming sugar during bottling.
I'm kinda doing this right now as I added some cambden when I racked it to my secondary but the SG was already pretty low. Yesterday when I was bottling this batch I was also transferring another batch to secondary and added a tiny bit of that yeast to my bottling bucket.
It seems like it would work but would require good timing of starting a new batch or racking one off to have a few drops of yeast.
Any thoughts???
Scott

No, that won't work, and it might make your bottles explode.

If you add yeast at bottling, it will eat not only the priming sugar but also the residual sugars that the initial pitch didn't get a chance to process before being pasteurized to death. Yeast is a glutton. It will eat whatever it can.

boom likely, if not boom then geysers

couldn't you reduce the temp of the batch (a corner of the basement) and put them back into hibernation? What exactly is that temp anyway. I had a batch stop fermenting in my basement this fall.

sashurlow said:

couldn't you reduce the temp of the batch (a corner of the basement) and put them back into hibernation? What exactly is that temp anyway. I had a batch stop fermenting in my basement this fall.

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That's the problem...there is no magic temp. Temperature slows down yeast metabolic activity, and there a point at which yeast will tend to stop processing external sugars. But, it is unreliable and presumes yeast to be more unitary and static than they are. Could you store a bunch of pre-bottle bombs near freezing for a few months? Possibly, maybe probably. Doesn't make it a good idea, though. It'd be like storing your pet rattle snake in your mailbox every morning because the mailman usually comes in the afternoon.

So I finally read Pappers thread on stove top pasteurization. Which brings up a question related to this thread I posted. It seems stove top pasteurization does not include aging or settling to clear things up. So would aging improve the cider? Would you get a better product to kill off the yeast, allow it to age, reintroduce yeast, let it bottle carb and then stove top pasteurize it to prevent bottle bombs???
thanks,
Scott

sashurlow said:

So I finally read Pappers thread on stove top pasteurization. Which brings up a question related to this thread I posted. It seems stove top pasteurization does not include aging or settling to clear things up. So would aging improve the cider? Would you get a better product to kill off the yeast, allow it to age, reintroduce yeast, let it bottle carb and then stove top pasteurize it to prevent bottle bombs???
thanks,
Scott

Click to expand...

What is the benefit of that over the much simpler:
partially ferment -> bottle and wait until properly carbonated -> pasteurize -> age?

I'm not sure you'd want to age sweet cider for a terribly long time, but if you did it seems like this would be an easier way to achieve what you describe, no?

So does it matter if you age it in the bottle vs the secondary?
I'd rather have a moderately sweet cider. I realize I could also back sweeten and bottle pasteurize.

sashurlow said:

So does it matter if you age it in the bottle vs the secondary?
I'd rather have a moderately sweet cider. I realize I could also back sweeten and bottle pasteurize.

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Perhaps, but if you want to bulk condition I think you'd be better off letting a it ferment fully, adding relatively more sugar at bottling, and then pasteurizing when some portion (but not all) of the sugar has been converted to carbonate.

Pasteurizing twice is just going to be too much unnecessary handling.

Thanks malfet. I have ideas but no experience. Its nice to hear another opinion. I'll have to experiment in the future.