"Category 5" Bottle Conditioned?

Last night I picked up a 6 pack of Clipper City Brewing's "Category 5" ale. The little blip on the label states "This here pounder has a fine layer of yeast at her bottom. It won't send you to Dave Jones' locker, but will protect your brew from the rigors of life at sea."

I thought 'Cool, bottle conditioned.' However, examining the bottle more, it said nothing about how to handle a bottle conditioned beer - which is something I thought it should have for people who don't know the concept. And after pouring out the beer like I do any of my homebrews, I noticed that it had absolutely no sediment in the bottom. So I poured the bottom of the beer into my glass and it was still crystal clear.

Anyone know why it claims to have "a fine layer of yeast at her bottom" if it doesn't actually have one? Or am I missing something here?

Im not familiar with that brew in specific, but there are a couple possible answers to your question.

One answer is that it is possible the yeast that may still be in the bottle had been roused and no longer settled at the bottom, in other words resuspended into the beer so when you poured, you didnt see any.

Another possibility is that though it is bottle conditioned, it may not produce as much sediment as us home brewers are used to seeing, which isnt just yeast but other proteins and unfermentables that are settling out. They could be using a filtration process before bottling resulting in less, if any sediment.

If I remember right Boulevard Brewing bottle conditions their beers, and the few I have had didnt have any sediment in the bottom. The saying on the label you bought may just be a friendly explanation to the curious party who gets a bottle with sediment, offering an answer as to why.

Hope that helps.

Brakeman_Brewing said:

Im not familiar with that brew in specific, but there are a couple possible answers to your question.

One answer is that it is possible the yeast that may still be in the bottle had been roused and no longer settled at the bottom, in other words resuspended into the beer so when you poured, you didnt see any.

Another possibility is that though it is bottle conditioned, it may not produce as much sediment as us home brewers are used to seeing, which isnt just yeast but other proteins and unfermentables that are settling out. They could be using a filtration process before bottling resulting in less, if any sediment.

If I remember right Boulevard Brewing bottle conditions their beers, and the few I have had didnt have any sediment in the bottom. The saying on the label you bought may just be a friendly explanation to the curious party who gets a bottle with sediment, offering an answer as to why.

Hope that helps.

Click to expand...

More than likely the yeast was back in solution simply from having been transproted to your house...and had you chilled them for a week, maybe you would have found it...but I have a lot of my bottle conditioned beers that really DON'T have a layer of sediment in mine...or nothing more than a thin opacity if you look straight down into it, more like a smear of "grease" actually.

Well made beer homebrew or otherwise doens't necessarily mean a lot of sediment/yeast in the bottle...just enough to do the job...I leave my beer in primary for a month, use moss in the boil, try to leave a lot of trub behind when I rack from kettle to fermenter and fermenter to bottling bucket, then I leave the beers alone for 3 weeks in the bottle...with a highly flocculant yeast a lot of "sediment" is left behind at each racking, which means that, depending on the yeast strain, may mean that there's actually not much in the bottom.

Since every living beer is different, they more than likely added that to the label incase someone saw a bit of "sediment" in the glass or bottle, but not enough to "teach" their customers how to pour to the shoulder.

Bottle conditioned beers in particular seem susceptible to batch-to-batch variation in clarity and sediment. I've had some commercial beers that were crystal clear despite multiple BA/RB reviews citing sediment and cloudiness, and others that had an appalling amount of sediment that no one else seemed to have noticed.

Given this, it's only prudent to have a note on the label that warns of possible sediment so people don't think their beer is contaminated. On the other hand, devoting enough label space to explain a proper pour isn't always an option, and it should be fairly obvious how to avoid sediment if desired.

flowerysong said:

Bottle conditioned beers in particular seem susceptible to batch-to-batch variation in clarity and sediment. I've had some commercial beers that were crystal clear despite multiple BA/RB reviews citing sediment and cloudiness, and others that had an appalling amount of sediment that no one else seemed to have noticed.

Given this, it's only prudent to have a note on the label that warns of possible sediment so people don't think their beer is contaminated. On the other hand, devoting enough label space to explain a proper pour isn't always an option, and it should be fairly obvious how to avoid sediment if desired.

Click to expand...

Yeah!!!

Besides more than likely the MAJORITY of the customers of the beer are already familiar with the idea of bottle conditioned beers...People who buy non-macrobrews tend to be a little knowledgeable about such things, while the little note is enough like you said, to calm some unsuspecting new customer's fears.

Very good points. I always thought that if the yeast were in suspension the beer would be cloudy. Is this not the case? Because this particular beer was incredibly clear.

It does make perfect sense that the beers would vary from bottle to bottle and that they would post this in case someone got a line of trub. But if the yeast were in suspension wouldn't that mean a somewhat cloudy beer? Maybe I'm wrong about this though?