Having trouble with Hope and King

[blackterror]

Hey everyone,

I just recently finished brewing the extract version of Hope and King. I’m sorry to say I’ve been having trouble with this brew. I’m hoping that it simply needs more time as most reviewers for the recipe are saying it takes a while to hit the mark. I did two weeks in primary, six weeks in secondary, bottle conditioned for two weeks and I had no carbonation. I hit my OG 1060 right on the mark, but my FG was 1015. What could have caused the poor carbonation? I was using Coopers Sugar Pellets to prime. I refrigerated one case right away but still have another at room temperature. I’m thinking maybe next week taking a bottle and cooling it to see if I have any more carb. Thoughts?

[mattnaik]

A total of 2 months before bottling there was probably not a lot of yeast left in suspension. It will carb it may just take 3-4 weeks or so.

What yeast did you use?

Edit: when you said you refrigerated it, did you mean right after bottling? Your beer won’t carbonate at all in the fridge. it needs to be kept at room tempurature

[blackterror]

I put one of the cases into the fridge after the two weeks of bottle conditioning at room temperature. The second case is still at room temperature.

Sorry…missed the question. I used the Wyeast 1098 British Ale.

[radagast]

I did 2 weeks primary, 4 weeks secondary, and three weeks at room temp for carbing for my Hope & King. I used the corn sugar that I ordered with the kit. I was disappointed in this one initially as I would describe it as only ok. I tried one three weeks ago (just over 3 months conditioning in fridge at that point) and it was almost a completely different beer. It really smoothed out and blended very nicely. Next time I make it, I’ll be conditioning it longer before cracking my first bottle.

As for carbing, I have a bunch of 1L pet bottles that I got when I used to brew with MR. Beer that I use for bottling about half of each batch I brew. This serves two purposes: less bottles to clean & very easy to tell when your beer has properly carbed. If you squeeze the plastic bottles and it’s not firm, let them sit longer. Someone also recommended giving the bottles a gentle swirl every other day or so and that seems to have worked out nicely for me as well and haven’t had any carb issues after my first batch of Irish Red. I’ve never used the carb tabs so I don’t honestly know if this would help with those or not.

:cheers:
Rad

[blackterror]

Thanks for the responses! I tried a few more bottles this past weekend at a reenactment and they went over very well. Slightly shaking seemed to bring about more carb (although that could just be my brain telling me so). Next time I’ll make sure to carb at room longer. Lesson learned: Check the forums.