I bottled the 115th Dream Hopburst on 7 Feb (all grain kit), its now 5 April and I checked a bottle and its still flat as a pancake, not a hint of carbonation.
For the past two months, i’ve swirled the bottles a bit, kept the temps between 72 and 74. I’ve bottled several other batches over the past year and I’ve never had a carb problem until now.
How much longer should I wait considering that there appears to be no carbonation at all?
I’m guessing that my next step is some sort of rehydrated yeast and sugar combination directly into the bottles? Where could I find some info about re-carbing bottles?
Thanks!
If you’ve swirled and warmed and still no carbonation after two months, you have three options: keg and carb, re-yeast only (if you’re sure you primed correctly), or re-yeast plus re-prime. Assuming the first option isn’t possible, re-yeasting and re-priming aren’t that difficult.
If you’re sure that you did not prime the bottles the first time, make a syrup with the proper weight of sugar - make it thick but pourable because you’re going to be adding this to the already-filled bottles and there’s not a lot room in the neck. Transfer syrup to a measuring cup and get the volume in oz, multiply by 6 to get teaspoons then by 5 to convert to mLs and divide by the number of bottles to get mLs/bottle. Re-hydrate a couple grams of dry yeast in 50mL of warm, sterile water. Sanitize your caps and set up your capper. Sanitize two baby medicine syringes (the kind with 1 mL markings on the side, 5-10 mL volume).
Open one bottle, add 1 mL yeast slurry and the correct mL of priming syrup, then re-cap. Once they’re all done, swirl to mix and keep warm.
How long did it sit in the carboy/bucket before bottling? Could be the yeast is dead or too stressed to work. You know for sure you added priming sugar? Serious question there, I know I almost forgot one time and have seen posts about people accidentally forgetting.
At 70 degrees or more it should be done by now, even a higher gravity beer. As I see it you have a couple options. First is to wait it out. I had this problem with a IIPA once and tried this approach to decide at the four month mark that I needed to move onto option two, which is reyeasting. My approach was very unscientific. I rehydrated a package of US-05, popped the caps, and added a few squirts of yeast into each bottle from an eyedropper. Some got a few drops, some got a full shot. They all carbed up the same within a week.
I keg most beer but bottle most bigger beers and now as a matter of principle to avoid this I add yeast at bottling time for every batch. Had a 13% barleywine carb in a week and have never had this issue since.
Did you use the priming sugar that comes with the kit and make sure it mixed well at bottling? It sounds like you did everything right and were very patient waiting to try one. Warmer temps and swirling the bottles are the normal fix.
There has been success with opening each bottle and adding a grain or two of dry yeast and sometimes more sugar. Caution with more sugar of course.
Have you tasted one even though it is flat? Off flavors could be bad but sweetness might be good just meaning there is still sugar and some yeast might do the trick. In a beer that hoppy it might be hard to tell though.
Good luck fixing it. That is not a cheap kit to give up.
Mine took about seven or eight weeks to carb up… even still, it’s not terribly fizzy. Next time, I’m all about pitching bottling yeast.
Thanks all,
yes, i’m certain I added the priming sugar at bottling and yeah, it is a good question! I could see how that would be a mis-step because I found myself a few weeks ago with my priming sugar still on the stove after I siphoned to my bottling bucket on an ESB.
So it looks like a re-yeast option for me. Thanks for the detailed process Shadetree, and Inhouse.
Yep, definitely not one to give up on.
Open the bottles and add some of this to each bottle and recap.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/red- ... yeast.html
[quote=“GarretD”]Open the bottles and add some of this to each bottle and recap.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/red- ... yeast.html[/quote]
I used champagne yeast on the barleywine I mentioned. I’ve also use safale 05
