Did I just set myself up for a flat beer by not adding yeast at bottling?

[TandemTails]

I bottled 1 gallon of my solera that had been aging for about 8 months. I added enough priming sugar to get about 3 vols of CO2 but didn't add any additional yeast at bottling.

I'm hoping there's still enough yeast/brett in there to chew away at the sugar and carbonate the bottles but I'm not really sure.

Think I'll be ok if I let the bottles condition for a month or two or should I pop the caps, add a little yeast and then re-cap?

 

[xpops]

i've done exactly that. brewed a DIPA and bottle conditioned.. 8 weeks in the bottle...no carbonation
i ended up popping the caps, dropping in a bit of yeast to eat up the sugars i had added at bottling. within a couple weeks they were all carbed up and i had saved the beer!

i'd let them ride a 4-6 weeks, and see if anything develops. They're already bottled, so you might as well give them the chance.

If nothing, then you can go the route i went!

good luck.

 

[b-boy]

I've had it go both ways. In some cases, no problems. Other times, little to no carbonation.

I'd check a bottle every now and again. If you're not seeing carbonation within a month or so, I'd add some champagne yeast to the bottles.

 

[hirschb]

It somewhat depends on the age of the solera. If you've started it a few months ago, there will likely be no issues. If it is 9+ months old, you might not have much living yeast. That being said, I typically do not add yeast when bottling long term aged sours. I also keep that in mind, and age the bottled beers for several weeks before cracking one open. One potential downside (in my experience), is that if you have little/no living yeast, lacto or pedio can really eat up the sugars, leading to a more sour, or in the case of pedio, diacetyl character. In the latter case, I had to wait `3 months for the brett to eat the diacetyl in order for the beer to be drinkable.

 

[rupert130]

I like to add CBC dry yeast at packaging time.

 

[Revvy]

I FINALLY just bottled my first Sour, a Flander's Red with Raspberries after about a 2 year process. Since I didn't remember what I should do, I "boned up" on what was needed to bottle them, and pretty much everything I read said add yeast at bottling. I think one of the articles I read said that a lot of the bugs we use in making sours will eat the sugar but NOT actually produce co2 or enough co2 to build up enough pressure to carb the beers. Don't know how accurate that is, but better safe than sorry I guess.

So I used CBC-1.

You might want to open and pitch more yeast. I find the best way to to it is to rehydrate a packed of yeast in warm water (just like you would rehydrating it) and get a graduated medicine dropper, like for giving liquid medicine to kids, stir up the yeast slurry and add a few MLs to each bottle with the dropper and recap.

 

[TandemTails]

I think I'll do the "wait and see" method. The solera was about 8 months old. I racked 3 gallons of it onto some cherries and oak and the airlock has been bubbling pretty consistently so I'm assuming there's enough yeast or brett in there to convert the priming sugar into CO2.