Bottling after a long secondary, should I add more yeast?

[sathrovarr]

2 months ago I've been brewing a dark belgian strong ale using WLP500, then I have fermented it in primary for 1 month and then transferred it to secondary for another month, when the secondary will end I want to bottle, should I add more yeast at bottling? Or is it not necessary and just will shorten the time till it will carbonate? I have washed some yeast when I have transferred to secondary but it was my first time and I'm not sure I did it well. Should I add the yeast anyhow? Or is there enough yeast in the beer?

 

[Gnomebrewer]

I've never used that yeast, but when I've bottled after that long (normally after lagering) the beer has carbonated, but has taken longer than it does after my normal 3 week ale fermentation. I find it takes about 4 weeks for my lagers to carbonate. Adding more yeast definitely speeds things up. You don't need to use the original strain - any clean ale or lager yeast will do. You don't need much - the few times I have re-pitched at bottling I've used 3.5g (a third of a packet) of dry lager yeast (S33) hydrated in 50mL of water. A bit of your harvested yeast (you'd probably only need a tablespoon or two) should also work well as long as you a sure of your cleanliness in harvesting.

 

[sejasba]

I made a RIS over the winter. It was in secondary for 3 months in my basement, which was quite cold (low to mid 60s i guess) given the "polar vortex" winter we had this past year. Bottled in February. Even today, some bottles have almost no carbonation, while other bottles are overcarbonated. Very confusing and irritating. Fortunately, I've started kegging now so I won't run into that problem anymore. I don't know if some bottles just had a bad seal or if the priming sugar wasn't mixed in the beer enough or what. I never had carbing issues until that batch (over 3 years of brewing and bottling), so I attribute some of my problems to the long secondary.

If it were me and I had a chance to re-do it, I'd ensure the priming sugar is mixed in well enough and I'd probably add a little yeast. But 1 month in secondary is different than 3 months. If i only had mine in there a month, I probably wouldn't add yeast.

 

[stevo4361]

Since you're going to want to age a Belgian Dark Strong awhile anyway before cracking the bottles open, (six months or so) I'd say you're fine don't worry about it. They will carb up fine. Adding yeast wont hurt anything of course but isn't necessary.

Steve

Edit-if you're worried your yeast harvesting wasn't good, especially if you think it's possibly infected, definitely don't add it in. You have enough yeast in the beer to carbonate.

 

[bakk]

I made a RIS over the winter. It was in secondary for 3 months in my basement, which was quite cold (low to mid 60s i guess) given the "polar vortex" winter we had this past year. Bottled in February. Even today, some bottles have almost no carbonation, while other bottles are overcarbonated. Very confusing and irritating. Fortunately, I've started kegging now so I won't run into that problem anymore. I don't know if some bottles just had a bad seal or if the priming sugar wasn't mixed in the beer enough or what. I never had carbing issues until that batch (over 3 years of brewing and bottling), so I attribute some of my problems to the long secondary.

If it were me and I had a chance to re-do it, I'd ensure the priming sugar is mixed in well enough and I'd probably add a little yeast. But 1 month in secondary is different than 3 months. If i only had mine in there a month, I probably wouldn't add yeast.

I had a similar experience a couple batches ago. Never had an issue with carbonation until one batch that sat in primary a little over a month (it was an experiment to clean up some potential off flavors from having temperature control issues), some bottles ended up carbed fine, and others were relatively flat. It was all tasty, and all of them carbed somewhat (every bottle gave that *pop* when opened) but I still can't figure out what happened.

Since then I've started incorporating a little bit of the top of my yeast cake into my bottling bucket when adding priming sugar. No troubles since.


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