Beer Forum

Recently I have come upon an issue that I have been struggling with. Carbonation by bottle conditioning. I have consulted two of my most trusted sources of brewing knowledge and have found a difference of opinion. I know that there is sufficient priming sugar in the beer since I've been using the nomograph provided in BCS, I believe the issue is yeast viability at the end of fermentation. There has been a recent article in BYO by the wizard that addresses bottle conditioning and covers the three bases that need to be covered in order to get proper carbonation. The Wizard says to add more yeast at bottling and listening back to an episode of Brew Strong Jamil says that there is plenty of yeast left to do the job even if the beer in the primary is clear. What do I do now?

Well.... I remember that in one of the brew strong episode Jamil and Palmer explain exactly how much yeast to add at bottling in those situations.... Not sure in which episode.... but probably the "Carbonation" episode.

Weeeel. It Depends. Generally there is plenty of yeast left. You need to add more, if you have a longer than normal fermentation time. (more than 2-3 weeks). Don't be misled, bottle conditioning may take 1-4 weeks, generally 2.

Sorry what I wrote was probably not appropriate for this conversation. So I removed it

Jamil always brings up the Sierra Nevada process, which is to add 1 billion cells/L of beer to bottle condition, which is 1/5 of a liquid package or 1g of a rehydrated dry yeast per 5 gallons of beer.

You can add more yeast at bottling if you just want to speed it up, especially when you have unhealthy yeast from a high gravity fermentation, or when you have a long aging period. I've bottle conditioned several lagers that sat for 4 weeks before going into the bottle and some were even cold crashed for a week and fined with gelatin, still took about 2 weeks to fully carbonate. Longer aging than that and I start to think about adding more yeast at bottling.

I think if you've got conditioning taking longer than 2 weeks then you either have the bottles too cold for the yeast or don't have enough healthy yeast to carbonate. I don't like the idea of leaving certain styles of beer at room temperature for 4 weeks (wheat beer, anything hoppy) for the reduced shelf life that comes with higher temperature storage. Not to mention the additional wait, these styles are best consumed as fresh as possible.

I like the previous post.

The thing to watch out for is blindly adding more yeast when you already have plenty. If you're brewing an average strength beer, pitched a proper amount of healthy yeast at the start, and you're bottling within a week of the beer finishing fermentation, then there is more than enough healthy yeast for carbonation. Adding more just adds more autolysis flavors down the road.

If you're filtering your beer or think you need to add more yeast, you never need more than 1 billion cells per liter of beer--far less than most people add.

So what would you do in the cases when your using a high flocculating yeast strain such as US-04. I'm assuming that there is general rule about the relationship between time and the amount of yeast present in the beer left from a low, medium and high flocculating yeast strain?

I think its far more likely to be about how healthy your bottle yeast is and the conditions you keep your bottles in.

I know for a fact that you can successfully bottle condition with beer that has been filtered through a 1 micron absolute filter. It takes longer and you would want to know that your yeast is in good shape.. but it works. So I don't think its anything to do with "how clear" your beer is going into the bottle - 1 micron filtered beer is diamond bright.