Flat beer help

The carb drops dissolved fine. Do you think a faster dissolving sugar would change anything?

The only difference would be some time. The effect would be the same. I had read that carbonation drops or fizz drops could still be seen sitting at the bottom of the bottle after a weeks time. This may have been related to only one brand or style of carbonation drops.

What type of bottles are you using. Some bottles just donā€™t cap well. I know twist offs donā€™t seal, there may be others. 7 weeks you should have something.

The majority of the bottles come from my local brew store, others are recycled stone bottles.

I wouldnā€™t keep throwing more priming sugar at itā€¦ as soon as the yeast wake up, you could end up with highly overcarbonated beer.

Dry yeast often times doesnā€™t fare well when re-yeasting the bottles. Was the dry yeast you added also the english ale yeast? Assuming you have plenty of priming sugar in there, I would go with a packet of champagne yeast. Rehydrate it in warm tap water for 10 minutes or so, and use a sanitized eye dropper to add a few drops to the bottle. EC-1118 is great for this, as it has a very high alcohol tolerance. It also ferments only simple sugars, so you donā€™t need to worry about it over-attenuating in the bottle. Itā€™ll consume the priming sugar, carbonate your bottles, and go to sleep.

Ok, I went to my brew store and picked up the ec-1118 yeast. They told me I should add another carb drop to each bottle and then put equal amounts of the yeast (dry) in each bottle. They also told me I would need to refrigerate the beer after it carbonates or the yeast will keep going and ill end up with bottle bombs. I need some opinions on how to proceed.

Assuming you have added priming sugar, donā€™t add any more carb drops. Youā€™ll overcarbonate and get bottle bombs potentially. But ec-1118, being a champagne yeast, can only ferment simple sugars, and not some of the more complex ones in wort. This is why it works for bottle conditioning - it only goes after the simple sugars like priming sugar. But if you keep adding more sugar, youā€™ll run into problems.

You can certainly add the yeast dry, but itā€™s just easier to hydrate it in some tap water and add it with a dropper to the bottles. You will also have more viable yeast by hydrating it first, since pitching it dry into a high alcohol environment will kill many of the cells.

I was thinking the same thing about the yeast. Can some one give me some ratios, yeast to water, re-hydrated yeast to 12 oz bottles?

IMHO Iā€™m beginning to think you should chalk this one as a learning experience.

Iā€™m still set on a yeast issue. I think it may be hard (not impossible) to get anything to get going with the ABV. Not to mention a pain now that itā€™s in bottles and all the extra priming sugar. If you plan on brewing this again maybe pitching an active starter prior to adding the priming sugar in the bottling bucket or skip bottling and keg it.

Looking back at the start of this topic you said ā€œdry english aleā€ were you talking about white labs wlp007? Iā€™ve read that it flocs like modeling clay. Was there any sediment in the bottles after letting them carb the first go around?

Try shaking the bottles ? Sneezles61

Yes it was wlp007 and I did a starter. Iā€™m not sure what went wrong.

I figure I got the yeast, so Iā€™ll try 1 more time. Iā€™m going to re-hydrate the EC1118 and re-yeast the bottles. I just need advice on how much water to use to re-hydrate a 8g yeast back and how much of the yeast solution to up into each bottle

I usually donā€™t measure the water precisely, just fill a sanitized glass up with some tap water, so maybe 4-6 oz lukewarm water. Ideally the water should be between 90-100F. Pour the yeast into the glass, cover it with some sanitized foil and let it rest for about 15 minutes or so. Once the yeast are no longer sitting dry on the top of the water, itā€™s okay to give it a gentle stir to break up any clumps.

At this point, it doesnā€™t take much yeast per 12-oz bottle. Just a few drops of dissolved yeast should do the trick. If you have a medicine syringe, lots of them donā€™t have measurements less than 1 ml, so just eyeball maybe 0.5 ml and add it to the bottle. Precise quantity isnā€™t all that critical, you just want to get some active yeast in there. If you are using bigger bottles, just bump up the quantity proportionally.

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