This is a follow-up from the adding yeast to bottled beer experiment that we revealed last week. Although the video we shot will show you the results of the experiments, here are the details of what I did and how I did it.

Champagne yeast

I bought a packet of champagne yeast and proofed it following the instructions on the package. While the yeast were waking up from their dormant state, I worked on other stuff.

Braggot bottles and caps

Of the 18 plus bottles I have left of the braggot, I chose six bottles to inoculate. With six bottles, I got out six bottle caps and sanitized them with a few sprays of Star San solution. While the caps were drying, I opened up a new box of children’s cold medicine and took out the syringe.

Syringe

I sanitized these two parts and let them dry while the yeast was in bloom mode. After 15 minutes, the yeast was showing some signs of life.

Yeast Bloom

Champagne yeast, in my experience, does not foam up like other yeast strains. For instance, Nottingham yeast blooms to double its volume. You can’t miss it. Champagne yeast sorta gets a little plumper but it is a bit underwhelming. After the fifteen minutes are over, you are left wondering if you have a bad packet of yeast. Now that I have used champagne yeast three times, I can say with confidence that this yeast isn’t a show off when it comes to blooming. It gently awakens but once you add it to something fermentable, watch out. These critters can eat.

With everything sanitized and the yeast bloomed, it was time to inoculate.

Yeast Dose

Speed was crucial so I created a step by step process to follow for each bottle.

1. Uncap a bottle
2. Draw a 5 milliliter yeast dose from the measuring cup
3. Introduce the yeast into the opened bottle
4. Recap the bottle
5. Give the bottle a gentle swirl to get the yeast mixed into the braggot
6. Repeat

By the end, the process left the bottle only open for 10 seconds. We videoed the big reveal if this experiment worked or not last night. Watch the video at the top of this post to find out if it was successful or not.