To pitch or not to pitch?!

Been fermenting/conditioning since end of February ....bottling day is coming - should I pitch yeast based on this length of time or is priming sugar still a safe bet?

On a side note...wtf is this in my secondary???? Looks like little white bacterial colonies on the side of the glass. They also dot the surface of the beer.

2 months isn't long enough to need any more yeast. looks like dried yeast/krausen, just ignore it

I think two months is cutting it kinda close.... All it takes is about a half ounce of new yeast to get those bottles carbonated. I would pitch new yeast.

I never had any luck pitching yeast straight into a finished beer. Anyone tried pitching a small starter at the height of fermentation, or even used champagne yeast successfully for their long lagered beers?

hopdoc said:

I think two months is cutting it kinda close.... All it takes is about a half ounce of new yeast to get those bottles carbonated. I would pitch new yeast.

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2 months isn't cutting it close, it'll be perfectly fine. i've left beers that long plenty of times without issue. if you search the forums you'll find people that went several months longer without issue.

JayDubWill said:

I never had any luck pitching yeast straight into a finished beer. Anyone tried pitching a small starter at the height of fermentation, or even used champagne yeast successfully for their long lagered beers?

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are you talking about for carbonation or re-starting fermentation? for carb, either works, but pitching a starter is over-kill. for re-starting ferm, champagne won't do much as its mostly just useful for simple sugars

I was talking about for carbonation. Luckily I've only had one batch that didn't carb much at all and I tried to sprinkle a little US05 in the bottles and recap...not much happened, the beer was still undercarbed. I eventually borrowed a buddies CO2 tank and a corny for that batch.

I say pitch

No need to pitch. Just add priming solution and bottle. There are still plenty of yeast in there- they're just asleep. A little priming sugar will be like the smell of frying bacon for them- they'll wake up hungry and get at it.

And don't worry about the stuff in your carboy. Looks like yeast and/or krausen residue.

i had a similar occurance. Bottles using priming sugar and a month later still no carbonation. So i was thinking either pour back into bottling bucket and pitch some yeast and re-bottle or pitching into bottles directly and recapping.