Racking Sediment

[pchriste]

I'm pretty new to brewing and have a quick question. When racking to either secondary or to my bottling bucket do I need to siphon up much of the sediment to ensure that there is enough yeast to carbonate or would there still be enough yeast in suspension?

 

[noggins]

The point of racking is to get it off the trub. There's plenty of yeasties suspended in the wort for carbonation so leave the muck alone, unless you wanna harvest some yeast for your next batch.

 

[cervezarara]

Many brewers on this forum leave the fermented beer on the trub (sediment) in the "primary" for at least 3 weeks. This allows the yeast time to clean up some of the byproducts of fermentation that they produce. After this time, you can rack into a "secondary," which is really just a clearing (brightening) tank or you can rack into your bottling bucket if fermentation is complete. (There is really no need to "secondary," although many feel it produces a clearer beer.) You can verify this by taking hydrometer readings two or three days apart and if the SG is the same, fermentation is probably finished.

The trub (sediment) on the bottom of the bucket is made up of flocculated yeast, some break material, and hop residue. You should really leave it behind to obtain a clearer beer. The beer will still have millions of live yeast cells per milliliter, which will be more than enough for carbonating.

 

[mochunk]

The beer will still have millions of live yeast cells per milliliter, which will be more than enough for carbonating.

Does this statement still hold true with a very low FG (1.004, spent 3 months on Brett and kiwi)?

 

[cervezarara]

Does this statement still hold true with a very low FG (1.004, spent 3 months on Brett and kiwi)?

I have to say yes. From what I have read, after sedimentation/flocculation, yeast counts will still be in the millions, even after several months. Think of Gueuze, for example, where one-year old lambic is blended and used to carbonate 2 and 3 year-old lambics.

Edit: Brettanomyces are super-attenuating and will often work slowly chomping everything for years! They do, however, cease reproduction in a low pH environment, somewhere around 3.2-3.4 IIRC. So I will qualify my answer depending on how acidic your beer is.