Bottling yeast

[FirebladeAdam]

I'm using Nottingham to bottle a saison-esque beer with, because I want it bright if possible. The fermentation yeast is Wyeast 1214 Belgian abbey. The 1214 will all fall out of suspension with a good long cold crash and I'll bottle with the Nottingham. Question is, how many grains go in? Any thoughts appreciated!
Thanks peeps

 

[Galena]

Won't the 1214 still become active though during carbonising? I have never killed a yeast off with cold crashing although I have never used 1214

 

[The Baron]

I think the same as Galena yeast is very resilient even after freezing so the fermentation yeast should still do the job IMO

 

[FirebladeAdam]

No a cold crash won't kill the yeast, it will cause it all to fall out of suspension, and then when I rack it off for bottling it won't be in the beer. I need to add another yeast, and I'm using Nottingham because it forms a nice solid layer at the bottom of the bottle, which allows me to pour a super clear pint. 1214 does not! It's easily disturbed even after ages in the bottle. Tastes great though. I fully intend to harvest the 1214 from the fermenter for the next lot.
Last time I cold crashed this beer I bottled, assuming the yeast would still be in suspension, and it didn't carb up. I went to the harvested yeast and added a small bit of sludge to each bottle and problem solved. But cloudy beer because the yeast is so easily disturbed. So Notty this time!

 

[nickjdavis]

The answer to your question is....very few.

When I feel the need to re-seed before bottling, I generally use Safbrew F-2 bottling yeast which comes in a 22g pack if I recall correctly. I've never counted the individual "grains" that I use for a 20L batch but I'd be very surprised if I used more than 1/3rd of a gram. I don't actually measure....it just gets a sprinkle into the bottling bucket along with the priming solution until the number of grains on the surface of the wort "looks right" (I batch prime).

 

[foxy]

I have never had to resort to priming with yeast at bottling but if you have a big beer then use the LalBrew CBC1 Cask and bottlkng yeast.

 

[Agentgonzo]

No a cold crash won't kill the yeast, it will cause it all to fall out of suspension, and then when I rack it off for bottling it won't be in the beer. ...
Last time I cold crashed this beer I bottled, assuming the yeast would still be in suspension, and it didn't carb up.

That's strange. Cold crashing removes a lot of the yeast, but there is still yeast suspended in super-clear bear (you can even harvest it from commercial bottled beer this method). But it'll do no harm in adding fresh yeast into the bottle to help carbonation.

Though it is noted that yeast that has undergone a high OG fermentation will be stressed/tired/not-healthy, so depending on how high your OG is, this could be a reason. I never see a problem in bottle conditioning with whatever yeast is still suspended in seemingly clear beer, but I don't generally go above 1.050 OG. If you have a high OG, that would be a good reason to pitch fresh yeast (the belgians do this because they naturally have a lot of freshly cropped healthy yeast to bottle condition with)

 

[Agentgonzo]

From my copy of Brew like a Monk, here are the pitch-rates used by Belgian trappist/abbey beers when bottle conditioning:

• Duvel: 1 million cells per ml
• Orval: 3 million cells per ml
• Rochefort: 1-plus million cells per ml
• Westmalle: 1 million cells per ml
• Allagash: 0.75-2 million cells per ml

So going with rough numbers, that would be 500 million cells per 500ml bottle.

A random internet search gives US-05 at 69 billion cells per 10.5g packet.

So 500M cells would be ~1/138th of a 10.5g packet, or 0.076g per 500ml bottle.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to check my maths and convert from grams to grains of dried yeast!

 

[MickDundee]

No a cold crash won't kill the yeast, it will cause it all to fall out of suspension, and then when I rack it off for bottling it won't be in the beer. I need to add another yeast, and I'm using Nottingham because it forms a nice solid layer at the bottom of the bottle, which allows me to pour a super clear pint. 1214 does not! It's easily disturbed even after ages in the bottle. Tastes great though. I fully intend to harvest the 1214 from the fermenter for the next lot.
Last time I cold crashed this beer I bottled, assuming the yeast would still be in suspension, and it didn't carb up. I went to the harvested yeast and added a small bit of sludge to each bottle and problem solved. But cloudy beer because the yeast is so easily disturbed. So Notty this time!

I lagered a Vienna Lager for 12 weeks before bottling back in 2020. I had absolutely no problem getting the bottles to carb up.

Not sure what’s happened to yours but there should definitely have been yeast in suspension to carbonate.

 

[MrRook]

I'm using Nottingham to bottle a saison-esque beer with, because I want it bright if possible. The fermentation yeast is Wyeast 1214 Belgian abbey. The 1214 will all fall out of suspension with a good long cold crash and I'll bottle with the Nottingham. Question is, how many grains go in? Any thoughts appreciated!
Thanks peeps

How long a cold crash? I kept a pilsner at 34f (1.11c) for three months and it carbed fine.

 

[Galena]

As above cold crashing will not drop all of the yeast out, it will still be there when you rack off and plenty enough for carbonation.

 

[FirebladeAdam]

Well this is really interesting; last time the cold crash was about a week. I'll try it without another yeast input and see what happens

 

[Sadfield]

When repitching at bottling I use 0.1g/L, although I hydrate the yeast in 100ml of water and batch prime. If you are priming the bottles individually, you could do something similar and dose the bottles with a syringe, pipette or teaspoon to get the same dose in each bottle.

I'd probably stick with your original plan of using Notty, if it helps improve sedimentation.