Re-carbonating flat filtered beer.

[aphex732]

Here's an interesting question: I want to play around with flavoring a beer, and it's too damn cold out to brew. I also ran out of homebrew last week, so I'm down to commercial microbrews.

I'd like to take a stout and soak cedar chips in it for flavoring, but I'm stuck with finding a way to rebottle and recarbonate it.

If I add the standard amount of sugar and a little bit of yeast to the batch right before bottling, will that carbonate it without affecting flavor? Has anyone done anything like this before?

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

 

[stonecutter2]

I've never done that before, but I would imagine you could do exactly what you said. You may not even need to add the extra yeast. If the beer you use is bottle conditioned, swirl the dregs of the bottle to mix up the yeast, then pour that into your secondary with the cedar chips.

Once you're done with the secondary soak with cedar, then yeah you'd just prime and bottle and cross your fingers.

The biggest challenge would be potential for contamination while cracking open the bottles and pouring into your secondary.

If it were me, I'd just seek out a beer I liked already done and drink it happily until I could brew again But what's the fun in that, right?

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

 

[aphex732]

Thanks for the insight! I actually just want to experiment - here's the deal. The conversation came up on a cigar forum about a cigar flavored homebrew. Since it's on the poisonous side to actually put a tincture of tobacco in beer, I came up with two ways to attempt to add flavor:

First, by cutting up a cigar box (an untreated one, the wood only) and soaking it in the beer. Hopefully this might impart some of the tobacco flavor.

Second, by adding smoke to the beer. I've used the "Smoking gun" (https://cuisinetechnology.com/the-smoking-gun.php) to great success with wood chips and cocktails, and want to attempt to burn tobacco in it and flavor the beer that way.

I'd like to take both a stout and an IPA and do one each with smoke, one with cedar, and one with both to determine which is the most palatable. They may all be horrible, I have no idea - but it's worth a shot!

 

[stonecutter2]

Thanks for the insight! I actually just want to experiment - here's the deal. The conversation came up on a cigar forum about a cigar flavored homebrew. Since it's on the poisonous side to actually put a tincture of tobacco in beer, I came up with two ways to attempt to add flavor:

First, by cutting up a cigar box (an untreated one, the wood only) and soaking it in the beer. Hopefully this might impart some of the tobacco flavor.

Second, by adding smoke to the beer. I've used the "Smoking gun" (https://cuisinetechnology.com/the-smoking-gun.php) to great success with wood chips and cocktails, and want to attempt to burn tobacco in it and flavor the beer that way.

I'd like to take both a stout and an IPA and do one each with smoke, one with cedar, and one with both to determine which is the most palatable. They may all be horrible, I have no idea - but it's worth a shot!

That is interesting, because I like smoking cigars too The spanish cedar might impart a "cigar like" flavor to the brew. Make sure it's real spanish cedar, not a veneer or anything.

I'll be interested to see what you think of the results.

 

[ariebsomer]

I've never done that before, but I would imagine you could do exactly what you said. You may not even need to add the extra yeast. If the beer you use is bottle conditioned, swirl the dregs of the bottle to mix up the yeast, then pour that into your secondary with the cedar chips.

Once you're done with the secondary soak with cedar, then yeah you'd just prime and bottle and cross your fingers.

The biggest challenge would be potential for contamination while cracking open the bottles and pouring into your secondary.

If it were me, I'd just seek out a beer I liked already done and drink it happily until I could brew again But what's the fun in that, right?

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

I did a tripel this winter that didn't carbonate at all, which was a huge disappointment. It was most likely a combination of the alcohol content (10%) combined with the fact that I did a long secondary without much yeast trub transferred.

I had recently added 5oz of corn sugar for my bottling, but there weren't enough yeasties left to do the job. However, I uncapped all my bottles and used half a pack of Lallemand CBC-1 Cask conditioning yeast on them - just sprinkled a small pinch into each bottle - and voila! In about 10 days, my beers were carbonated fantastically.

You're probably right that you may need more sugar at this stage in the game. You might try dissolving some priming sugar in warm water, let it cool to a reasonable temperature for yeast (65-70 degrees), and then hydrate the yeast in the sugar water. You could use a dropper to add some of this solution to your bottles.

I'm with Stonecutter on the risk of contamination/infection though. A higher ABV beer would help reduce the risk here. Soaking your chips in vodka or some other kind of neutral spirit might also help.