Bottling/yeast question??

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GatoRailBrewery

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Brewed a Chimay clone in Dec. and went to a secondary at the end of Jan. I am wondering if I ought to hit it with an amount of yeast at bottling? Would the existing yeast be too stressed to create co2 without any nasty flavors? Or is more a question of temp?
 
A couple questions:

1) What was your OG reading? Yeast that ferment at high alcohol levels may die rather than become dormant in the fermentation stage. If your OG was too high, you might not have an amount of yeast that is sufficient for bottling. Chimay has a commercial alcohol by volume of 9%, what is yours?

2) What carbonation level or volumes of CO2 / 5 gal are you targeting?

I'd venture to guess regardless, you'll be OK. There are always viable yeast in suspension in the beer while it's still in the primary. Unless you killed the yeast with high OG (and subsequent high ABV), or didn't use an alcohol-tolerant strain, IMO you'll be fine if you bottle at the calculated priming proportions and a warm bottle-conditioning temperature.

Also, "nasty flavors" are intermediate compounds that are produced during alcohol production. In the bottle, a high concentration of CO2 limits the yeast's ability to produce any alcohol. By comparison, your primary fermenter lets out CO2 via the airlock/blowoff tube, keeping the dissolved CO2 levels at a minimum and allowing the yeast to convert sugar to alcohol. This is why you don't get any extra ABV% from bottling yeast. So, bottling yeast wouldn't be responsible for any nasty compounds you taste, but you should attribute off-flavors to hot-side errors or fermentation conditions.

Hope it turned out well, follow up with details!
 
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