Bottling Pilsner - do I need more yeast?

[Nztayls]

So I have had a Pilsner lagering in my fridge now for a good several months, and am now getting around to bottling it. I read somewhere recently that for beer that has been lagered for a decent amount of time that it can be worthwhile adding a dose of yeast to the bottling bucket to ensure that there is enough left in the beer to be able to carbonate the bottles - the theory being that over time most the yeast will have dropped out during lagering, and there may not be enough left to do the job unassisted. 

I havent had this problem previously, but then I have only in the past done a couple of lagers, and then I have only lagered them for up to a month, not the three that this one is currently sitting at. 

Anyone have any advice?, my main concern is I end up creating bottle-bombs by over-carbonating.

[Richard Deeble]

I would probably want to pitch a little bit of new yeast to make sure you get even and reliable carbonation as the yeast remaining in your beer might not be that healthy. You don't need much, a couple of grams of rehydrated dry yeast is probably plenty. I wouldn't worry too much about the yeast strain much either; a clean and flocculant ale strain like nottingham or your average dry lager yeast would be fine at this stage as it isn't going to add a lot of flavour.

You shouldn't need to worry about bottle bombs if you fully fermented out your beer and you use an appropriate amount of priming sugar.

[Grant R Baker]

+1 to Richards comment. Even the live yeast left in the beer will truly be sitting on the bottom after such a long stint lagering. Even with a short lagering stage I find lagers take so much longer to carb up than ales which is a pain since lagers are generally meant o to be highly carb'ed.

[Peter Smith]

how long is long?   I have a pilsner that is 3 weeks in bottle no additional yeast and its like a normal brew after 1 week, very very low card, it was in carboy for weeks.   do they sometimes take 6+ weeks?

[Grant R Baker]

Sounds right. I had my last lager 'lagering ' for about 3 weeks... then it took about 6 weeks to carb up to where an ale would barely take 4 weeks.

Personally I think Lagers may be better suited to kegging and force carbonation.

I should add that I have only done 4 lagers so far... but they have all behaved the same (using two different lager yeast)... but they have all behaved the same in this respect.

[Nztayls]

Thanks. Yeah, I think the easiest option would be to just shell out the money and buy a kegging setup. A few more beers tonight and I just might work up the courage to do it. And face the wrath of the wife when she checks the bank account on Monday!

[Grant R Baker]

ha ha.. just doing that myself. Its not cheap... but nothing good is.

[Hamish Jones]

Just do it the way I did, I got the wife excited about having bourbon and coke on tap and she caved really easily, I have just begun the mission of using a counter pressure filler, I've had it for two years but never got around to using it, when I was bottling lagers after aging then crash chilling they were taking 8 to 10 weeks to carb up fully, so from now on I will keg all lagers then bottle them off that way