big beers....

i have ten gallons of a barley wine, and a belgian triple. both were well into the 1.090 range of og. i brewed them both last decemeber. they have been in secondary after a month of primary fermentation. both are down where you'd want the gravity to be, the belgian, actually a lot lower than the barley wine, but it is what it is.

would it be wise to pitch some fresh yeat along with the priming sugar? i'm thinking a packet of dried nottingham tossed into the bottling bucket with the sugar. half a packet per batch sound good? or should i use more yeast?

Even after 6 months there is probably enough yeast in suspension to carbonate, but a half packet will speed it up.

Do you need to rehydrate the yeast, or can you just throw it in dry? I've always used liquid yeast, so I have no experience with dry.

Rehydrate. Your pitching dry yeast into a medium with alcohol already in it. This may stress the cell walls to much if you don't rehydrate.

In researching I have found that many brewers would refuse to bottle a batch such as yours.( preferring to keg)

The high abv is a consideration for new yeast since they may be paralyzed by the high alcohol content. So also may the existing yeast, in which case priming sugar would only sweeten your flat beer a little.

I myself have two imperial stouts in the bottle, og a little higher than what you are describing. Both in the primary and secondary 30 days.

I invented a technique (I think) closest to "krausening" as I can figure. I put a new yeast into the "primer " (sugar and water boiled and cooled) and let them go until I got visible fermentation. I then added this to my bottling bucket and bottled as usual. After a month, this one has perfect carbonation.

The other batch got no new yeast. After 1 month in the bottle it is barely carbonated.

Since I plan to leave these until november, I think A may be overcarbonated, B will be perfect. The point is that after only a monthin primary and secondary, the yeast in B were barely able to make any carbonation after a month. I would be concerned about the length of time yours have spent in the secondary. Good luck!

cheezydemon said:

In researching I have found that many brewers would refuse to bottle a batch such as yours.( preferring to keg)

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Well, I'll disagree with that right off the bat. Kegging a barleywine is really not the best idea, given that barleywines need age to really perform. It's like buying a barrel of Romanee Conti instead of by the bottle.

david_42 said:

Even after 6 months there is probably enough yeast in suspension to carbonate, but a half packet will speed it up.

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Personally, I add a few pinches of rehydrated dry yeast to anything that sits in carboy for more than 6 weeks. After the debacle with my wheat doppelbock never carbonating, I decided that it was a small price to pay to ensure that there was still enough yeast in my long-term carboy-aged beers for bottle fermentation to occur.

Anybody ever pitch a dry lager yeast in these circumstances? From what I've read, the actual strain used makes little difference since there are so few fermentables to be converted, but using the lager yeast will let you condition colder (celler temps, at least), and the yeast will stay active. That's my plan, unless I hear compelling advice otherwise, when it comes to the Belgian.

the_bird said:

Anybody ever pitch a dry lager yeast in these circumstances? From what I've read, the actual strain used makes little difference since there are so few fermentables to be converted, but using the lager yeast will let you condition colder (celler temps, at least), and the yeast will stay active. That's my plan, unless I hear compelling advice otherwise, when it comes to the Belgian.

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I did. Primary was Bohemian Lager; bottling was Saflager. Or are you talking about primary:ale + bottling:lager?

Well, it's a Belgian Dark Strong Ale, so I'm using WLP-550. Planning on Saflager for bottling for the reasons cited, unless someone convinced me that it's a bad idea.

Bird-Isn't that what commerical breweries do with hefe's?

Ferment with a hefe yeast, filter, then bottle with a lager yeast?

If so it sounds like it's alright to do.

the krauesening is an interesting idea... i'd prolly boil up a small starter batch of dme light and toss the yeast in there, then combine in the bottling bucket. not sure how much you would need though... there is still plenty of sugar in the barley wine, not sure how much of it is fermentable.

evan, when you say you add a pinch of dried yeast, how do you do it? right into the bottling bucket?

in anycase, i'm not looking to open these untill thanksgiving/xmas season, but i want to get them in the bottles by july...

thanks for the replys guys!

I also bottled a "big beer" the other day that had been in the secondary for awhile. One technique that would help is "racking" the yeast when transferring and priming. Racking is scraping a good bunch of settled yeast into suspension during the transfer which effectively increases the amount of viable yeast for conditioning. That supposes that the yeast are not entirely dead which would be uncommon. There are viable yeast cells in there. You just have to get enough of them.