Bottle Carbonating a Russian Imperial Stout

[BeerEngineer15]

I brewed a Russian Imperial Stout (all grain) on 1/26/14 that had an OG of 1.096. On 1/30/14 I moved from primary fermentation over to secondary with a gravity of 1.024 and added two cans of Oregon Fruit Products Tart Red Cherries and 2 oz of cocoa nibs. This is currently still in secondary but has had steady readings of 1.018 for the last couple of days in a row. The yeast used for this beer was a WLP001 (California Ale).

This gives around a 10.5% ABV beer, right around what I was aiming for. I tasted it also and it tastes great, the cherries got lost but the chocolate and malts are amazing.

I'm going to be bottling it over the next week and I'm concerned that the yeast may not be active enough to carbonate it. I know that I want to aim for 1.9 volumes of CO2 to meet the style requirements so I have already calculated out my mass of DME but I've heard that I may need to rehydrate some dry yeast a day before to give the boost that this big beer needs.

What have all you guys done with big beers like this? Have you added additional yeast? I appreciate any and all advice on this question and thank everyone in advance for your help!

BeerEngineer15

 

[jdhasse]

LHBS has recommend to rehydrated dry champagne yeast for big beers. However I worried the fresh, high alcohol tolerant yeast would eat more sugars than i wanted it to and possibly reduce FG more than I wanted to.