Bottle conditioning Barley wine outside yeasts alcohol tolerance

[pmastello]

I'm brewing a barley wine with my brewclub this weekend and am thinking ahead about how I will carbonate it when its finished.

We are brewing about 200L of barley wine and dividing it up into 25L cubes and everyone is fermenting it with different yeasts. I'm going to use a Munich lager WY2308 yeast, which has a reported alcohol tolerance of 9%. However the Barley wine will come in at about 10%. I'm pretty sure the yeast will be able to finish the beer off with a large pitch and lots of O2 but I am worried that it won't have enough left to bottle condition when its finished.

I've tried Krausening a barrel aged beer before, which I had mixed results. I do have a beer gun, so I can carbonate in a keg and fill the bottles after, but I would prefer bottle conditioning as the yeast will scrounge up any oxygen, which will be better for aging long term.

What do you guys reckon?

 

[Kranky]

Can you borrow a cpbf off someone? Alternately you could always just age it in the keg.

 

[Yob]

Why not add a high gravity yeast toward the end of ferment ?

 

[TimT]

Interested in this one.

Adding yeast - 'barm' - at the end of fermentation was I believe a traditional way of carbonating ales; sometimes the barm would have herbs with it too to add a little more zing and taste to the ale.

Whether barleywine, though, was traditionally carbonated... this I do not know. I suspect not - perhaps partially because of the problems with adding yeast to an environment that is already high in alcohol. (I wonder: wouldn't it just cause even high-alcohol yeasts to go, 'Nup, don't want to'? Don't they prefer starting off with a lot of sugar and then gradually adapting to the high alcohol environment?)

An additional thought: one known way of nudging ferments to higher levels of alcohol is by feeding small amounts of sugar to the yeast every few days - effectively rewarding and selecting the yeast in your ferment which tolerates alcohol the most. In this way the yeast can be nudged to go above its usual alcohol tolerance level (about 14 per cent). Bottle priming seems to be a simple version of this.

I suppose you could try and work a variation of this - taking samples and bottling just before the yeast is done its primary ferment, with priming - but that seems, er.... dangerous, to say the least. I dunno. Wonder if others have experience with this?

 

[Weizguy]

OK, Ginge. I have this!
I once brewed a strong ale to over 13%.I swirled the fermentor daily for a few months to ensure that the ferment was done, before bottling was considered.
At bottling, I added a low amount of sugar, to get the right level of carbonation, and some W1028 yeast.
I chose W1028 - London Ale because it was alcohol tolerant and available.
I allowed a month to carbonate and was happy with the results.
Even won me a 1st in a comp after 18 months of bottle aging.

 

[Tex083]

I have been reading Chris White's book in yeast and in the book he covers this. I'm in the train on my way out so can't look it up but I think the solution was pitch your chosen yeast wait to almost attenuated and add the second high alcohol tolerant yeast.
Now the second yeast won't add much if any flavour as a majority if the sugars have been converted and the flavours made. Allow the second yeast to finish and bottle as normal.
The other tip I picked up was proper oxygenation of the wort. On pitching and day 2 for high gravity. Do you use pure O2?

 

[pmastello]

Yep, I've got a Oxygen bottle.
I'll get out my yeast book and have a read through that section.

Sounds like a repitch of Alcohol tolerant yeast plus priming sugar is the way to go. What about dry yeast - US05? Or should it be actively fermenting?

 

[Tex083]

Safbrew S-33 is a high alcohol tolerant yeast.
In the book, chris white talks about pitch rates and priming rates. If you dont have a microscope it can be difficult. I would add the yeast to the brew and wait until that has settled the gravity or you may end up with over carbed beer.