2 adding yeast to bottles questions!

[BrewsterFish]

Hi! I have a helles that I am bottling soon. I get 50/50 response on whether or not to add yeast with the priming sugar to ensure carbonation.

What do you all think? Has anyone done it?

Second Question:
For fun, if I was to to add yeast add bottling, lets say I through a belgium yeast or something into my lager, will I get belgium yeast characteristics? This second question is just a curious thought, I might try it down the road.

 

[doomy86]

I never added yeast at bottling and until now all of my beers carbonated just fine. Recently i bottled a sour that was lagering for 3 years in my cellar, only added sugar and the yeast still carbonated perfectly.

You probably won't get any Belgian flavours, because the yeast produces most of them at the beginning "high kräusen" of fermentation.

 

[Sadu]

My experience is that the longer you lager the beers before bottling, the longer they take to carbonate. But they tend to have a smaller cake at the bottom of the bottle which I like very much.

Personally I wouldn't add extra yeast to a helles if it's only been lagering a couple of months. But some people do, and that's cool too.

 

[Yooper]

I usually have added yeast to my lagers for bottling, as once I waited for about 6 weeks for carbonation, and it still wasn't quite enough.

It's easy. Just make your priming solution, cool it, add 1/3 package of neutral dry yeast (nottingham is fine), add that to the bottling bucket and then rack the beer into it.