Coldcrashing and refermenting in the bottles

[skibb]

I recently brewed up a Belgian Golden Strong recipe, got it down to 1.007, and now I'm coldcrashing it for a few weeks at 40 degrees. I used Wyeast 1388 yeast (Duvel's strain), which from what i hear likes to stick around in suspension for a while. I did not have a clean carboy to transfer this over too for secondary so it is just sitting in the same vessel.

What my question is, will there be enough viable yeast left in brew for refermentation to happen in the bottle?

I do have some dry wine yeast I can rehydrate to ferment the priming sugar if need be...but I'm not sure how much of the packet I should use.

 

[rcrabb22]

I recently brewed up a Belgian Golden Strong recipe, got it down to 1.007, and now I'm coldcrashing it for a few weeks at 40 degrees. I used Wyeast 1388 yeast (Duvel's strain), which from what i hear likes to stick around in suspension for a while. I did not have a clean carboy to transfer this over too for secondary so it is just sitting in the same vessel.

What my question is, will there be enough viable yeast left in brew for refermentation to happen in the bottle?

I do have some dry wine yeast I can rehydrate to ferment the priming sugar if need be...but I'm not sure how much of the packet I should use.

If you give them some more food, like priming sugar, and they will eat and carbonate your bottles.

 

[JVD_X]

You shouldn't need to cold crash for weeks. Just a couple of days should work well. If you are concerned then wash the yeast and repitch some during bottling.

 

[Bensiff]

I would cold crash 30 for a day or two, that will do more to clean up your beer than 40 for two weeks. I would also consider your ABV when determining if the yeast will bottle condition for you. For my Belgians that hit the mid 7's and above I keep some US-05 around to make sure I will get good carbonation. It doesn't impart any flavor and it won't lower the FG...just added insurance in case the yeast petered out between the ferment, ABV, and cold crash.

 

[Xakk]

A little gelatin once it's cold will clear everything right up.

 

[ian-atx]

If the beer is really strong I would hit it with some US05 at bottling. I did this with a RIS that finished around 10.5 or 11%. Rather than hoping the original yeast had some life in them, I just used some 05 and it worked really well.

I have bottled cold crashed beers before (normal-ish gravity) and they carb fine at room temp. The alcohol level will have more effect on yeast being worthy or not.

 

[AnOldUR]

I would cold crash 30 for a day or two, that will do more to clean up your beer than 40 for two weeks.

This. Two weeks at 40 degrees is not cold crashing. It's refrigerating.

 

[Revvy]

And even if you cold crash, there still should be enough yeast around to do the job. One thing that you could do, that I do with month long primarys, is to give the bottom of the auto siphon a quick brush across the bottom of the fermenter or secondary to kick up, and rack over some of the yeast from the bottom. That will insure you have enough yeast. And once it warms back up during bottle carbing, they will be fine. I've even done it with lagers that primaried for a month and lagered for 2-4 months and they carbed up just fine.