High Gravity Natural Carbination

[Macandrews]

This topic has been brought up a few times in the 25 pages that i just poured over and in each instance a mediocre job was done at best. Here are my questions.

With a high gravity beer that was pitched properly, should a repitch of the same yeast be made at bottling or a few days before?

If bottled with the proper amount of corn sugar and no repitch, how would one carbonate the beer after it was discovered that not a single living yeast cell was left alive?

With these questions, i will tell you about my beer and what i have done. Imperial stout OG 1.111 FG 1.020. I made an oatmeal stout 1.055OG and pitched the Imperial onto that cake. WLP004 Irish ale Med-high alcohol tolerance. I primed with sugar and bottled. It's 6 months later and its dead. Its awesome, but its dead. I have done the following:

I turned one upsidedown and roused the yeast. dead

Thinking maybe i forgot the sugar, i threw a coopers drop in one and recapped. Still dead.

I put that bottle on top of the dryer for a week. dead.

The next thing to do would be to try the dry yeast and put a few nuggets of US-05 in a bottle and let it sit, but i hear about the bottle bombs. How would it be a bottle bomb if it is already done feremnting? This beer pisses me off because its next to perfect but for the carbonation.

Next time i plan to repitch 2 days before bottling, but if i throw Irish into a 12% wont it just kill the new yeast?

[Billy Klubb]

This topic has been brought up a few times in the 25 pages that i just poured over and in each instance a mediocre job was done at best. Here are my questions.

With a high gravity beer that was pitched properly, should a repitch of the same yeast be made at bottling or a few days before?

If bottled with the proper amount of corn sugar and no repitch, how would one carbonate the beer after it was discovered that not a single living yeast cell was left alive?

With these questions, i will tell you about my beer and what i have done. Imperial stout OG 1.111 FG 1.020. I made an oatmeal stout 1.055OG and pitched the Imperial onto that cake. WLP004 Irish ale Med-high alcohol tolerance. I primed with sugar and bottled. It's 6 months later and its dead. Its awesome, but its dead. I have done the following:

I turned one upsidedown and roused the yeast. dead

Thinking maybe i forgot the sugar, i threw a coopers drop in one and recapped. Still dead.

I put that bottle on top of the dryer for a week. dead.

The next thing to do would be to try the dry yeast and put a few nuggets of US-05 in a bottle and let it sit, but i hear about the bottle bombs. How would it be a bottle bomb if it is already done feremnting? This beer pisses me off because its next to perfect but for the carbonation.

Next time i plan to repitch 2 days before bottling, but if i throw Irish into a 12% wont it just kill the new yeast?

try using a high grav strain with your yeast cake next time. or try a secondary. it could be leaking the CO2 if not capped properly. did you aerate or oxygenate well before fermentation? did you use yeast nutrients for such a high grav beer? how old was the yeast cake? how long did you let your Oatmeal Stout sit on it before bottling? do you like ice cream cake?

[Nyakavt]

I like to add some dry yeast to the bottling bucket when bottle conditioning a high gravity beer - although it may not always be necessary. You say it's been six months? There's no way you're going to get carbonation now without additional yeast. You have several options, from least to most effective, easiest to most difficult to work with:

1) Add some dry yeast directly to each bottle
2) Add some rehydrated dry yeast slurry to each bottle (like with a drinking straw)
3) Add some krausen beer to each bottle

Yeast are pretty alcohol tolerant buggers, almost all of them will survive up to about 15% ABV. The bigger concern is the yeast just dropping out without eating the priming sugar. I have bottled a 12% ABV barleywine after 3 weeks of fermenatation and just poured half a pack of US-05 on top of the bottling bucket, it carbed up in about 2 weeks. But this is a different situation, since I may have gotten some help from the live yeast remaining which you almost certainly do not have.

So I would try just adding some rehydrated yeast slurry to each bottle and capping up, checking first that you do still have some priming sugar in solution for them to eat (take a gravity reading, should be .002 or so higher than FG).

Krausen beer is basically a partially fermented yeast starter (maybe a pack of dry yeast into 1 pint of starter wort, adding it to the beer at high krausen). This ensures that the yeast is awake and active before pitching into a hostile environment, but this is usually only necessary if you are trying to gain additional attenuation for a stuck batch. Priming sugar requires less work for the yeast to consume so its more likely that they will eat it up with no problems.

Do not worry about bottle bombs unless you get an infection - 1.111-1.020 is DONE with all the fermentable sugars.

[Macandrews]

[/quote]try using a high grav strain with your yeast cake next time. or try a secondary. it could be leaking the CO2 if not capped properly. did you aerate or oxygenate well before fermentation? did you use yeast nutrients for such a high grav beer? how old was the yeast cake? how long did you let your Oatmeal Stout sit on it before bottling? do you like ice cream cake?[/quote]

Big fan of the ice cream cake. Oatmeal stout was bottled after 3 weeks from primary. Bottles were capped properly. I aerated the shit out of it. 1.111? I whipped it so much I felt like Mel Gibson. I didnt use any nutrients, but the beer was pleanty done. The yeast was young, healthy, and it fermented well. Im going to try a little yeast in a bottle and see how it goes. I had a bottle last night. it tastes like Satans cough syrup.

[Billy Klubb]

it tastes like Satans cough syrup.

I think you just found a proper name for the beer.

[Macandrews]

Nothing works so i dunked each bottle in star san, ripped the caps and poured them into a steralized bottling bucket (no splashing). Racked to keg and i will let you know about infection, oxidation, and any other BS that causes people to look in horror at what i just did. Its an experiment and if it works, it could be some valuable information for someone.