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I'm planning on bottling my 11.6% RIS this evening and using table sugar for priming. My question is, should I be adding some fresh yeast (US-05) when I prime? The yeast I used to ferment was Wyeast 1728 which has an ABV tolerance of ~12%. I'm thinking that because I was relatively close to that, that I should be adding about 3/4tsp of dry yeast to make sure all the bottles carb.

Thoughts?

I should also mention that I'm shooting for about 2.2 volumes of CO2, and I've got 5.25 gallons that I'll be bottling.

I've had trouble carbonating my higher ABV beers in the past. They either took forever or never fully carbonated. Is there a dry yeast that can tolerate 11.6%?

spears104 wrote:I've had trouble carbonating my higher ABV beers in the past. They either took forever or never fully carbonated. Is there a dry yeast that can tolerate 11.6%?

I think US-05 will be fine at 11-12% according to what I've read. It should at least last long enough to eat up the little bit of priming sugar that will be in the bottles.

I would.

akr71 wrote:I would.

Any idea on amount Andy? I was thinking ¾ of a tsp based on the "yeasting rates" in this NB PDF.

Too much bottling yeast isn't a problem like too much sugar (IMO its still too little to cause any kind of off-flavor). They'll only eat as much sugar as is available to them, assuming the alcohol doesn't get to them. 3/4 tsp seems good to me. When I bottle(d), I dissolve the priming sugar in some (boiled) water and rack on top of that. On bigger beers, I threw the some yeast (prob a half to 1tsp) in the bucket with the dissolved sugar before racking because I was paranoid that the yeast wouldn't get evenly distributed.

Interesting doc - thanks for pointing that out.

I'll probably just wing 1 tsp in then, just to be safe. I've spent so much time on this beer already that the last thing I'd want is for it to not be carbed properly. Thanks for the info!

I've had much better results adding fresh yeast than not on a beer like this. I add about 2 tbsp of my freshest yeast cake from the fridge to the bottling bucket. You could also cold crash to get some of the dead yeast out and add a couple additional tbsp of yeast cake if you're concerned about not having much yeast in the bottles.

Thanks Brian—I think I'll likely head with the dry yeast route.

You may find that dry yeast will drop out without carbing in a high alcohol beer. I just went through this again (sigh) on my big brown beer. It would not carb, and fresh yeast that was not still slightly active wouldn't do shit. I used one massive pich from Nash that I activated with CLO2. Nothing. When I finally pitched onto just finishing yeastcake from my wheat beer, bingo.

I wonder if I should make up a small starter with some rinsed yeast then just to get things going and them bottle when that's nice and active?

That's what I would do. I'll never try to pitch unactivated yeast into fermented wort ever again.