prime or not to prime?

[tatlock]

I made a beer on the 9/9/09,racked to secondary on the 16/09/09 and its sitting under airlock now.It started at 1070 and is now down to 1015.I don't plan on drinking this for at least 3 months so can i get away with adding no priming sugar etc? I don't want a flat beer but i am sure i have read that if you leave a strong ale long enuff it will carbonate without adding any suger.

[booldawg]

I suppose it depends on how much residual sugars (which will be minimal) are left in the wort, the health of the yeast and the conditions (temperature eg.) I've not tried it as I err on the side of caution and always prime.

[Brownster]

I made a beer on the 9/9/09,racked to secondary on the 16/09/09 and its sitting under airlock now.It started at 1070 and is now down to 1015.I don't plan on drinking this for at least 3 months so can i get away with adding no priming sugar etc? I don't want a flat beer but i am sure i have read that if you leave a strong ale long enuff it will carbonate without adding any suger.

For what it's worth I fermented a mild earlier this year using danstar windsor, it finished a few degree's higher than the recipe but probably in line with the attenuation for this yeast. I never added priming sugar because of the higher FG and after a few months it carbonated fine. I think I'm right in saying that, if you use a highly flocculating yeast such as SF04 or Danstar Nottingham and you let it condition for longer than a week say, the chances are you might not get enough yeast cells in to do the job, regardless of priming; I've heard on these forums a way round this is to introduce a new yeast at bottling to compensate for this possibility.

All what I have read so far points to the fact that priming is only done to bring beer into condition quicker than not priming and therefore not essential to get it into condition. Having said that, I still would normally prime like Booldawg says and not take a chance