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This is a follow on to my other question about when you would need to pitch additional yeast for bottle conditioning.

Assuming you know that you need to pitch more yeast before bottling to ensure your beer gets carbonated, how do you do it? What strain do you use? Do you add it to the bottom of the empty bottling bucket before siphoning the beer from the fermenter, or do you add it to the top of beer after you've already siphoned into the bottling bucket? Do you need to wait for any amount of time after pitching before filling the bottles?

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Where to get the yeast is answered in your other question.

The strain doesn't much matter unless its a huge beer and is exceeding the alcohol tolerance of a neutral strain like S-05. Generally I like to use the yeast I fermented with, by keeping some from the starter or some from the trub in the primary for bottling.

I add it to the bottom of the bottling bucket before adding the beer, along with the priming sugar. I still carefully stir the mass afterward to ensure even distribution. I had a batch where a bunch of bottles were overcarbed and a bunch undercarbed because I didn't stir my priming sugar after adding it to the already-full bottling bucket.

Do not wait any time to bottle after you add the yeast and priming sugar. The whole point of the operation is to catch the CO2 that the yeast is going to make to carbonate the beer. Waiting would only waste some CO2. On top of that there is risk of contamination in the open bottling bucket.

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Thanks for the answers. I figured that waiting would only meant lost CO2, but I thought maybe you'd want to give the yeast some time to acclimate to the beer and to reproduce before they start eating. Then again, they won't reproduce much in an anaerobic environment. –  JackSmith Feb 18 '10 at 16:37
All true. Glad I could help. –  TinCoyote Feb 19 '10 at 1:25

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