Bottling high gravity brews

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gyoder

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Reading, PA
My first high-gravity brew will be ready to bottle by the weekend. It's a pliny the elder clone that had an OG of 1.076. It was in the primary for 1 week and after the quite vigorous fermentation ended I put it in the secondary and dry-hopped for the past 6 days. The gravity as of today was 1.016.

I read that sometimes it's a good idea to re-pitch a fraction of a starter when bottling high-gravity brews in order to get carbonation more quickly. What are your thoughts on doing this? Is the gravity low enough that additional fermentation won't be a problem and the bottles will explode? Am I being a worry wort and should I just add the corn sugar as usual?

Any input would be greatly appreciated...

P.S. Making sure some yeast gets into suspension when racking to the bottling bucket I think is out of the question due to a large amount of hop pellet sediment comingling with the yeast.

Thanks!
 
I've never brewed anything that big, but everything that I have done in the 1.060-1.070 range have carbonated just fine. They took a little longer, but that could be due to the colder conditions in my house.
 
For bottle bombs, what matters is how much you use and residual sugar, not the ABV of the ale. You have excellent attenuation (what yeast? Pacman?), so there is little concern over residual sugars. I suspect what people are aiming for by priming with some of the original wort is greater consistency of flavor.
 
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