I was hoping someone could explain the advantages of adding champagne yeast after primary fermentation is complete? Thinking about brewing a barleywine, and have heard some people say they like this technique. Does it help with fermentation? Or just add flavor? Or a little bit of both? Thanks!
I'm pretty sure it's only used in cases of long secondary, like a barley wine, big stout, or sour. The yeast is basically dead for bottle conditioning, so you add champagne yeast, which handles high alcohol/acidic environments.
I'm going to guess on this as I have never heard it myself. I would assume Champagne yeast is pretty alcohol tolerant compared to Ale yeast so you could probably attenuate a few extra points out of whatever you are brewing. Just a thought...
Champagne yeast is good for eating simple sugars and is tolerant of high ABVs, so it can be used bottle condition beers whose primary strain has fallen out over a long secondary period (for example). It is not good for finishing attenuation of beers where the primary strain has quit (due to high ABV or poor health or low pitch rate), because the remaining sugars will tend to contain more complex sugars like Maltose (which Champagne yeast is not good at using) and Maltotriose (which champagne yeast can't use at all).
Thanks, so it seems like it's good for additional fermentation only. No flavor characteristics are imparted by the Champagne yeast?
IMO any yeast used only for bottle (or cask) priming isn't going to be able to impart much flavor, because its activity will be limited by the relatively small amount of sugars.
