Westy clone with 530 - what should I bottle with?

[MaskdBagel]

I have a Westy clone lagering now, and I'll probably be bottling in about three weeks. It went from 1.095 to 1.015 with WLP530 in primary, but I'm thinking a little insurance with fresh yeast when bottling is a pretty good idea.

I grabbed a mason jar worth of slurry when I racked to secondary (didn't want to leave it sitting on everything in primary for 6+ weeks), but I'm not too confident in using that for a starter since I haven't done it before - this is a big and complex beer to experiment with.

I know I should avoid a higher attenuating yeast so I don't overcarb, and I think a few grams of dry yeast will be sufficient, but I don't know enough about different strains to know what's best. Would part of a pack of US-05 do the trick, or would something else be better?

Appreciate the help!

 

[bmaupin]

I used cbc-1 and now wish I would have used 530/3787 - not bad but probably a little more yeast character if used 530. I always over build starters and save some for next brew, but next time I'll save a separate amount for bottling.

 

[griffi]

for my Westy 12 clone, after lagering, I decided that I needed bottling yeast. I used 1/4 pack of US-05 hydrated then mixed in the bottling bucket. Bottles are all carb'd perfectly without ridiculous amounts of sediment...

 

[MaskdBagel]

for my Westy 12 clone, after lagering, I decided that I needed bottling yeast. I used 1/4 pack of US-05 hydrated then mixed in the bottling bucket. Bottles are all carb'd perfectly without ridiculous amounts of sediment...

Thanks! Sounds like that's the way to go. Now if only I had enough leftover D-180 to prime...

 

[secondbase]

I like cbc-1 for bottling. I typically use about 1/3 of a packet.

 

[griffi]

Thanks for that info, I'd never heard of cbc-1. Will give it a try next time. As a side note, opened another bottle yesterday (approx. 7 mos from brew day). It's really coming into it's own now!

 

[GRJBowers]

From Brew Like a Monk:

Chris White of White Labs estimates a good slurry will contain about 30 to 40% yeast by volume and should have about 1 billion cells per milliliter. You can calculate how much yeast you need from that. Dave Logsdon cautions to be careful in harvesting yeast, particularly from the bottom of the fermenter, because excess trub will wreck your refermentation. "You hate to see a great beer ruined by bad bottle-conditioning, with tons of protein flakes floating in it," he said.

That said, the some Trappist abbeys top-crop their yeast and use some of that for reyeasting, some for the next batch. I can't remember if Westvleteren is one of them or if it's even mentioned in BLAM. For yeast numbers, the few that are mentioned use anywhere from 1 million cells per milliliter (Duvel) to 3 million cells per milliliter (Orval). Westmalle uses 2 million cells per milliliter and Rochefort uses "1 million plus" cells per milliliter.

Using the Westmalle numbers (since that's the strain you're using), for a 5 gallon (19 liter) batch, works out to 722 billion cells, which seems awfully high to me, but there it is.

Hope that helps.