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Repitching Wyeast 1968 after cold crash and gelatin?

GoodNewsBrews

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Hey brewers!  I have a jar of 100 billion cell Wyeast 1868 that I harvested from an intentionally overbuilt starter.  I am about to cold crash and fine a pale ale with gelatin and I am concerned I won't have enough yeast present for good bottle conditioning.  This yeast drops like a ROCK and the last brew (IPA) I did with it had carbonation issues not related to priming, temp or time.  It also suffered from chill haze; crystal clear when warm and hazy as all get out when cold...hence the upcoming crash/gelatin.

If I want to give this a better chance at carbonation, how much yeast should I add to the bottling bucket?  Should I build a mini starter with a portion of this jar and pitch that into the bucket?  How many cells should I look for for a 19l/5gal batch?  Thanks so much!
 
The good news is that you really don't need a lot of yeast cells to do bottle carbonation.  I've never had to use gelatin on WY1968 because, as you pointed out, it drops like a rock.  If you look at your beer just before bottling and it has a slight haze to it, you have enough to cause refermentation in the bottle.  If you choose to slurry up just a little bit of yeast, wait towards the end of the siphoning or draining, do a slight swirl to bring up just a bit of yeast from the bottom and siphon/drain until you see just a slight cloudy beer come through the tube.

Regarding the chill haze, the best way to handle this is to cold crash to as low a temperature you can get the carboy to reach.  The closer to 30?F, the better the proteins that cause chill haze will fall out.
 
Thanks Oginme!  How long would you recommend at 33f?  If I do the crash, would swirling up some slurry undo the anti-chill-haze effort?  It's hard for me to tell if there's any haze to it (and thus yeast) before bottling as I use a stainless steel fermentor.
 
I usually cool slowly (over a day+ from fermentation temperature down to around 30?F to 34?F and leave the carboy at that temperature for a few days.  The more flocculant the yeast, the less time I leave it at that temperature.

Swirling up a bit of yeast will not affect chill haze.  If the haze is caused by yeast in suspension (highly unlikely with WY1968) then you already would have enough yeast to referment in the bottles and would not need to make sure more yeast is in solution when siphoning from the carboy.  Even with cold crashing, I still have not had any issue with bottle carbonation.  Since you are attaining clear beer at warmer temperatures, it is not a yeast haze, but clearly a protein chill haze. 
 
Thanks Oginme.  The IPA was my first beer with chill haze and I don't want to begin crashing and fining all my future beers.  Is there reason to think the new Pale Ale I'm brewing would suffer from it as well?
 
Your choices for clear beer are combination of kettle fining (irish moss, whirlifloc, PVP), fermenter fining (gelatin, PVP), and cold crashing or time. 

With IPAs and pale ales, you are better off doing fining and cold crashing, as the aromatics and hop flavors fade fairly quickly with bottling.  Lagers, I can allow to sit in cold storage for an extended period of time, so gravity will eventually clear the beer.  Highly dry hopped IPAs will almost always have a little bit of light scattering, not really a haze but not really super clear, due to the hop oils introduced with dry hopping.

I use Irish moss in the kettle at 15 minutes left in the boil combined with a cold crash for most of my recipes.  Lately, I've also been using gelatin on some of the medium to low flocculation yeasts to speed up the clarity in the bottle or if I will be kegging the batch.
 
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