pitching at bottling

[bsmith]

hello - i'm a fairly new brewer (10 extract batches) and really starting to love the hobby. this is my first time on this forum and hoping to get some advice. i just brewed an ale that had an unusually high OG (1.096) that i did not expect, and looking for recommendations on pitching additional yeast at bottling time (or before?).
i brewed a beglian red ale "abbey rose": 8 lbs light pale male (4 lbs 60 min boil / 4 lbs added at 25 min left in boil), 1 lb dingemans special b (30 min steep @ 160), 1 oz crystal 3.8% bittering full boil, 1 oz crystal 3.8% finishing 20 min, 1 oz dried rose hips 20 min left in boil, wlp550 with 1 liter starter pitched at full krausen.

when i measured the gravity prior to pitching, i couldn't believe the OG was so high but was excited to see what would happen. i thought at the time that the 550 in a one liter starter would be enough to take care of business, but after reading into it (and after i tossed the yeast cake from primary - doh!), it appears i underpitched. i racked to a glass carboy secondary after 7 days, in which the gravity was still very high at 1.054. i plan on letting it sit in the secondary for 3 weeks or more, but measuring the gravity in a couple weeks to see where it's at. i feel that i may want to pitch another vial of 550, but is this recommended? if i pitch into the secondary, is it ok to pitch without oxygenating? if i pitch at bottling, would i want to pitch the whole vial and sugar and would i have to worry about bottle explosions? just curious what advice others may have. thanks!

bsmith

[BrewMasterBrad]

If your gravity is still high, you can try re-pitching but don't oxygenate again. Make a starter for the new yeast and pitch it at high krausen. If you oxygenate your beer you could cause all kinds of off flavors from oxidation. Others could probably give you better feedback when it comes to bottling.

Brad

PS - Welcome to the board.

[backyard brewer]

Welcome aboard, I think you'll find a bunch of pretty helpful brewers with good attitudes here.

It sounds like you have two issues here, 1) the beer is under attenuated and you need to bring it down. 2) The yeast may be too stressed to properly carbonate the beer.

I don't have much experience brewing Belgiums so I'll defer on #1. As for the bottling, you could borrow a keg, force carb and counter-pressure fill. Or if you want it bottle conditioned, then you could make a yeast starter based on the amount of sugar you have calculated to give you the volume of CO2 you need and then pitch the well oxygenated starter into your finished beer and bottle. Wait for some signs of fermentation before pitching, mix well and bottle.

The O2 in the starter will be consumed very quickly by the yeast and at ~70* bottling temp there shouldn't be any risk of oxidation. The yeast will not be stressed by the alcohol and should be plenty strong enough to get the job done. I'd use a neutral dry yeast like us05.

[brahn]

Adding yeast to a stuck fermentation is a bit tricky. You need to pitch much more yeast than you would at the start of fermentation. The idea is to pitch a full population of yeast since the first yeast used up the o2 and many of the nutrients that the yeast need to reproduce. There was an interesting discussion on the brewing network with either Chris White or Dave Logsdon on this, but I can't find it right now.

How long ago did you brew this beer? when did you rack it? For now I would just leave it alone and hope that there's enough yeast still in the beer to finish it up. Check it in a few days and see if the gravity has dropped at all.