[eluterio]

Have a question about cold conditioning and using priming sugar to carbonize beer after a long period of cold conditioning.

I did an double ipa and after primary I transferred into a keg for second fermentor. I left it in my fermentation chamber at 67 degrees for about a week before I placed it in my fridge to cold condition. Its been a four weeks now and im getting ready to bottle.  I'm concerned that I have not only put the yeast to sleep i fear that i will not have enough yeast to use priming sugar to carbonate it.

I placed this into a keg because I didnt have enough bottles to fill.  I would normally just push co2 and be done with it but this is for a friend of mine who doesnt have a kegging system. 

Does anyone think or have done this, warm the keg up to room temp, add priming sugar then bottle?  Would you add the normal amount or would you have to add more priming sugar since it was cold crashed for longer period of time?

Any info will help thanks

Thanks

[bbesser]

I have not specifically run into this problem, but one option you have is to force carbonate it in the keg, then bottle from there.  That way you wont have to worry about it being carbonated or not.

It is also pretty easy to make a bottle filler from a racking cane and a picnic tap.  Just remember to reduce the CO2 pressure to 2-3 psi and bleed of the keg before you start to bottle.

[tschmidlin]

Is the beer carbonated?  If it is, just counter pressure bottle it and be done, or do like bbesser says and carbonate it first.

If it is not carbonated and you want to bottle condition you will need to warm it up for the yeast to be active, either after bottling or before.  If you are worried about yeast health, add a little bit of fresh yeast at bottling.  I haven't bottle conditioned in forever so I am not sure how much, maybe a couple of grams of dry yeast?

Anyone want to chime in?

[eluterio]

I thought about doing a counter pressure filler with my picnic tap.  I didnt want to include this in the original post but the DIPA came out just a tad too sweet.  I figure with conditioning by using priming sugar, I can maybe lose some of the sweetness from the left over sugars.  It might not even be noticeable but to me its worth a try.   

Thanks for the info guys

[Jeff M]

I thought about doing a counter pressure filler with my picnic tap.  I didnt want to include this in the original post but the DIPA came out just a tad too sweet.  I figure with conditioning by using priming sugar, I can maybe lose some of the sweetness from the left over sugars.  It might not even be noticeable but to me its worth a try.   

Thanks for the info guys

If your beer didnt finish fermenting and you are trying to bottle condition i would make sure you bottle condition in he keg, if you add more sugar and the beer has fermentibles in it then you are gonna be making bombs.  the kegs can take much more carbonation.

[morticaixavier]

adding more sugar will not cause a too sweet beer to become less sweet. at least not at the levels you'd be using to prime.

if you do prime add the recommended amount of sugar and as Tom said, add a few grams of dried yeast. you can add a whole packet but it's way more than you need. I generally use ~ half a package of us-05. but a Jeff says if the beer didn't finish then bottling is risky.

Try this. pull a sample, maybe a pint or so, into a sanitized mason jar or similar. add a whole package of us-05 and keep it as warm as is practical. aerate it well and let it go for a few days to a week and take another gravity reading. if the gravity drops the beer isn't finished. Let the sample go until it stops dropping. this is at least close to you real attenuation limit with this beer. you can then calculate how much extra sugar (if any) you would need to add to get the level of carbonation you want and go ahead and bottle with new yeast.

[eluterio]

Thanks, this info was really useful.