No carbonation on my abbey triple

This hasn’t happened to me since my first few batches of homebrew, but my latest batch, an abbey style triple, has been in the bottle for about 4 weeks, and has virtually no carbonation. I’ve always used the correct amount of priming sugar as calculated by batch size, style, temp, etc… However, this is the first time that I’ve ever added Biofine to the secondary a few days before bottling, (which coincidentally didn’t help clarify my beer, but I’ll save that for a different thread. Anybody ever use a Biofine and have a similar result? If not, are there any possible explanations for lack of carbonation?

I would bet my hard earned cash that two things are going on:

  1. triples are high OG which results in very tired yeast.
  2. the biofine stripped any active yeast out of suspension.

Those two together is a recipe for disaster. You could always try adding a little fresh yeast to each bottle.

There’s virtually no carbonation, or absolutely no carbonation? There’s a pretty big difference between the two in how you fix it. If there’s even a hint of carbonation, then you probably have some tired yeast that need some extra time to eat up the priming sugar. I’ve had some higher ABV batches take a couple of months to properly carb. The good news is that once it starts, it usually carbs up pretty quickly. How warm have you been storing the bottles?

Thanks for the distinction. There’s virtually no carbonation, (some but very minimal). It could be that I have exhausted yeast, and I have been storing it in my basement which stays pretty consistently between 65 and 68 degrees, so I think if I moved it upstairs where it’s warmer, it may speed things up. I actually pitched this batch on to a big yeast cake that I had leftover from a batch of Patersbier, and it had a very fast, very aggressive fermentation. I’ve just never used Biofine before, so naturally I’m worried that this killed any chance of it properly carbing. I’m encouraged by your comment that there may still be hope! I’ll move them upstairs where it’s warmer and give them a few more weeks. Cheers!

The nice thing is that you could add some dry yeast to each bottle and recap. You don’t have to worry about bottle bombs because your not adding any additional priming sugar.

My tripel took almost 8 weeks to fully carb. I actually bought a heating blanket and put them in the box I store my bottles in while carbing. So that brought them up in around the 80’s. If you are seeing some carbonation after a few weeks, chances are it will finish out it just may take a very long time.