Bottling A 9.75% Peanut Butter Stout

[SourLover]

I have a 9.75% Peanut Butter Stout currently sitting in the fermenter. I'm guessing it will be ready to bottle in 2 weeks or so. The OG was 1.099, and the current gravity, which I expect will be the final gravity is 1.025. It was fermented with WLP001. My plan is to cold crash and bottle the entire 5+ gallon batch.

The question is, will I want/need to add additional yeast at bottling time? If so, would I want to use rehydrated US-05, wine yeast, champagne yeast, or something different than these three? When I've used wine yeast in the past it has been on beers at or near 1.000, so I wasn't concerned with further attenuation. Would a wine or champagne yeast further attenuate this beer?

If it matters, when I bottle, I individually prime each bottle with corn sugar, and yeast on the beers that require it. I started doing this after a batch priming failure. Does it take longer, yes, but I like the results I get.

 

[milkflakes]

White Labs says WLP001 has a tolerance of 10-15%, I wouldn't worry about pitching any new yeast. Just because I'm curious, what happened with your batch priming failure?

 

[Kee]

I routinely sprinkle in Lalvin EC-1118 when I bottle my Westy 12 clones (OG around 1.092, FG around 1.012). It's cheap insurance after having a batch never carbonate, although that was after cold crashing.

 

[SourLover]

White Labs says WLP001 has a tolerance of 10-15%, I wouldn't worry about pitching any new yeast. Just because I'm curious, what happened with your batch priming failure?

Yes, I had seen the alcohol tolerance previously. I just don't know how much viable yeast I'll have left after cold crashing this beer. I put too much work into this one to have it not carbonate.
On the batch priming failure it was a myriad of things, including but not limited too: using a temperature between the cold crash temperature and fermentation temperature to calculate the quantity of corn sugar needed, overshooting the amount I intended to transfer, undershooting the amount of corn sugar added to to make up for the overshoot volume, being a little nervous about stirring it too much when I added the corn sugar for the overshoot volume, and aiming for a volumes of CO2 that was probably too low to start with. In short, the kegged half of the batch was amazing, and the bottles were a waste of a good beer. It was all my fault though, so I will chalk it up to a learning experience.

I routinely sprinkle in Lalvin EC-1118 when I bottle my Westy 12 clones (OG around 1.092, FG around 1.012). It's cheap insurance after having a batch never carbonate, although that was after cold crashing.

I usually use the Red Star Premier Cuvee wine yeast as part of my bottle priming. I use it rehydrated with Go Ferm according to the Go Ferm instructions. It works great for me every time now on my betters that are pretty much fully attenuated. I definitely agree with you that it is cheap insurance. I'm assuming when you use the EC-1118 you don't get any further attenuation? 1.025 has a lot more left in it that 1.012, and I'm still wondering if I'd get further attenuation in the bottle?

 

[Kee]

I'm assuming when you use the EC-1118 you don't get any further attenuation? 1.025 has a lot more left in it that 1.012, and I'm still wondering if I'd get further attenuation in the bottle?

I've never gotten further attenuation, but I see your point. Your recipe and final gravity are not in the same ballpark. It's my understanding that EC-1118 will only go after simple sugars and not maltose, but I'm a non-expert here.

 

[SourLover]

I've never gotten further attenuation, but I see your point. Your recipe and final gravity are not in the same ballpark. It's my understanding that EC-1118 will only go after simple sugars and not maltose, but I'm a non-expert here.

Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully there’s someone out there, who can comment, that knows if further attenuation will result from the use of wine or champagne yeast.

 

[Cloud Surfer]

I see there's a lot of people in forums who confidently state that you don't need to pitch yeast at bottling, and given time your bottles will carb up. I've been burnt so many times by my high ABV batches that never carb, even after months at room temperature. My personal experience is that once my beers get over 9% and then I either cold crash them or bulk age them for a while, they won't carbonate.

I decided enough was enough, and about 5 weeks ago I bottled a 12.5% RIS which I had bulk aged over 3 months. I added CBC-1 yeast to the bottling keg along with the priming sugar. I just opened the first bottle and the carbonation was excellent. This is the first high alcohol beer I've ever managed to carbonate, so I'm pretty happy with that.

The FG was 1.027, and it didn't end up over carbonated. These bottling yeasts just go after the simple sugars you add at bottling, like dextrose, so you wont get over carbonation trouble. Needless to say, I'll be adding bottling yeast to every high ABV beer from now on.

 

[SourLover]

I see there's a lot of people in forums who confidently state that you don't need to pitch yeast at bottling, and given time your bottles will carb up. I've been burnt so many times by my high ABV batches that never carb, even after months at room temperature. My personal experience is that once my beers get over 9% and then I either cold crash them or bulk age them for a while, they won't carbonate.

I decided enough was enough, and about 5 weeks ago I bottled a 12.5% RIS which I had bulk aged over 3 months. I added CBC-1 yeast to the bottling keg along with the priming sugar. I just opened the first bottle and the carbonation was excellent. This is the first high alcohol beer I've ever managed to carbonate, so I'm pretty happy with that.

The FG was 1.027, and it didn't end up over carbonated. These bottling yeasts just go after the simple sugars you add at bottling, like dextrose, so you wont get over carbonation trouble. Needless to say, I'll be adding bottling yeast to every high ABV beer from now on.

Thank you for the detailed post. I appreciate the help. The last thing I want to do is get burned on this batch, so I'm going to move forward with the added yeast at bottling time. I always do one bottle from each batch in a PET bottle as it lets me know when the batch is fully carbonated and can be moved back to the 55-60 degree storage area. On this batch I will do two PET bottles. One with the added yeast, and one without. I'll label them to check the results, and then circle back to this thread with those results at a later date.

 

[SourLover]

I'm getting back to this thread a little sooner than I thought. This beer ended up at just under 10%, and was bottled on 3-18-21. I individually primed each bottle, and added between 2 and 4 milliliters of a rehydrated CBC-1 mixture. I opened up the box today and checked my 500ml PET sample bottle and it appears to be fully carbonated. Unfortunately, I didn't do the sample bottle without the addition of the bottling yeast so I can't compare one to the other. I'll let these sit at my office a few more weeks before I bring them back to the 60 degree room where I'll let them sit for another month or so before trying one. The force carbonated sample we did at bottling time was pretty good so I have high hopes for this batch.

Thanks to those who offered up their help to me to help ensure I could get this batch carbonated.

 

[tracer bullet]

Good to hear.

First time seeing the thread. Thought I was having was - maybe (next time) don't cold crash? It would sort of ensure yeast in suspension gets into each bottle. Versus cold crashing it out, then adding more because it is gone...

 

[odie]

Sounds tasty...maybe look into a nitro kegging setup?

 

[SourLover]

Sounds tasty...maybe look into a nitro kegging setup?

I hope it turns out well.
Right when Covid hit I had elaborate plans for a 6 tap keezer, but then I couldn't get the freezer I wanted. The plan was to have one Nitro tap in it. There's only two of us that consume the kegged beer, and I'm now thinking that the two tap setup I have works fine. Now that I think about it, it would be very easy to do it inside by cold crash fridge that doesn't get a ton of use. This just might become my next beer project.