Bottle Conditioning an Ale with Lager Yeast

[Tom Wrinkles]

I am thinking of bottling my bourbon barrel aged old ale. I don't think it has enough yeast left in it to self carbonate. We used the very flocculant WLP002 yeast. The beer will have been in the barrel for three months when we keg and bottle. What I want to know is what is a good lager yeast that will carbonate these bottles with the least amount of off flavors and how much to use in a five gallon batch?

[sirgiovanni]

Good lager yeast? Never heard of it!

Bottling yeast just depends on what character or lack there of you want to add as a finishing touch to your beer. I would pay attention to attenuation if your percent is high, from there it just depends on flavors or esters you may or may not want.

Don't forget to give them some food!

[Tom Wrinkles]

I planned on putting five ounces of corn sugar boiled in one cup of water for five gallons of beer.

I am looking for a yeast to carbonate my beer that leaves behind a neutral flavor. I have heard before that once you let a beer sit in a secondary for a long period of time, you must add yeast if you want to carbonate your beer in bottles.

[sirgiovanni]

Then if it were me, I would use california ale yeast and let it sit at room temp for 3 weeks.

[Savage]

Your thought of using an lager yeast is an interesting one. Lager yeast tends to be more alcohol tolerant which would be well suited for an old ale. However, as lager yeasts ferment they tend to throw out sulfur (especially when stressed by the presence of high alcohol or above cellaring temperatures). Granted it would not be much, but sulfur is very detectable even at very low amounts. The lager yeast would probably take the sulfur back up, but you would have to set this beer aside for what could probably be at least a year to clear the sulfur.

As far as not pitching a bottling yeast, it would probably work. But, if your beer is 8% or more ABV I would repitch. It will take a long time to bottle condition off the original yeast.

You would probably be happier with the results from a fresh pitch of Chico strain like Jim said. Chico is WLP001, Wyeast 1056, or Saf ale US 05. It is clean, alcohol tolerant, and very floculant.

[Tom Wrinkles]

I think I will go with the WLP001 strain. Thanks for the advice gentlemen, and you too Jimmy!

[sirgiovanni]

You're welcome, wait, what? Son of a!

[Dwayne_Delaney]

Danstar has a new yeast that might work.


http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brew ... yeast.html