I brewed a batch of red ale, with 14 days in primary, 18 days in secondary, added plenty of table sugar per Northern Brewer’s priming calculator and bottled it. After 13 days bottle conditioning at 73 F to 74 F, I opened a chilled test bottle and poured it into a very cold mug.
Brew tasted quite good, but very minimal carbonation.
How long should I wait before trying another, and would you recommend more yeast, more priming sugar or carbonation tabs if I need open them up, add something, and recap the bottles?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Flip the bottles over for a few seconds every other day to get the yeast back in suspension and check one after 1 more week.
Cold mugs kill head. Try a regular room temperature mug and see if the problem disappears.
My previous brews have had a good head with cold mugs.
Should I gently turn the bottles over or agitate them?
Gently turning once in a while should help.
How much priming sugar did you use into how much beer? Unless you’ve been agitating the bottles daily, my experience is, it takes more than 2 weeks to carb. 3 is pretty standard. 4 or more if kept at cellar temps.
I used 98 grams regular table sugar into 4.5 gallons.
The problem is using metric measures. If you had gone with 3.45685 oz. everything would be fine :lol: Just kidding of course. I have to agree with turning the bottles and wait another week or two with them somewhere warm still. The very cold mug might kill the head some but I don’t use them because very cold temps can mask the flavor of beer. To each their own though.
That’s right on target for about 2.2 vols. so I would say it probably just needs some agitation, increased temp, and/or more time.
Thanks for the advice. I’ve turned the bottles upside down and then back to right side up and I’ll check one again next week.
