my beer tastes sweet after bottling

FSBrewer · 12-29-2008, 02:07 PM

I made an AHS Becks Extract, lagered it in the beer fridge for 2 months. As I recall it tasted OK then. Then I used 1.25 cups of light DME as my priming sugar when bottling it. That was also 2 months ago. Unfortunately the beer still tastes of DME. I guess the yeast did not fully consume the priming malt. I assume that at this point I shouldn't expect the sweetness to go away.

Any suggestions on how to avoid this problem in the future?

PS - it does have some carbonation but not extremely fizzy.

**Austinhomebrew** · 12-29-2008, 02:13 PM

Use corn sugar to prime instead of DME. Corn sugar is easier for the yeast to process. Esecially since you have removed almost all of the yeast.

ArcaneXor · 12-29-2008, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FSBrewer

I made an AHS Becks Extract, lagered it in the beer fridge for 2 months. As I recall it tasted OK then. Then I used 1.25 cups of light DME as my priming sugar when bottling it. That was also 2 months ago. Unfortunately the beer still tastes of DME. I guess the yeast did not fully consume the priming malt. I assume that at this point I shouldn't expect the sweetness to go away.

Any suggestions on how to avoid this problem in the future?

PS - it does have some carbonation but not extremely fizzy.

Agitating the bottles and raising the temperature to 70+ degrees may get things going again, but it would probably be quite slow and may well stall again.
I would uncap the bottles, add a few drops of rehydrated dry yeast with decent alcohol tolerance to each, and then quickly recap. Keep the bottles at 70+ degrees for a 4-6 weeks, and that might do the trick.

FSBrewer · 01-03-2009, 01:56 PM

I've kept the bottles at warm temperature for several weeks but this hasn't helped. I guess I'll try these suggestions, but first I need to research which yeast is best and then acquire an eye-dropper or something. I will try corn sugar next time. Thanks for the ideas.

**Yooper** · 01-03-2009, 02:54 PM

I had a beer that just wouldn't carb up and I bought a package of dry nottingham. I put like one little grain of yeast in each bottle, and recapped them. They then carbed up just fine.

Kugster · 01-03-2009, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by YooperBrew

I had a beer that just wouldn't carb up and I bought a package of dry nottingham. I put like one little grain of yeast in each bottle, and recapped them. They then carbed up just fine.

For real? One tinny grain?

**Yooper** · 01-03-2009, 03:01 PM

Yep. I put such a minute amount it, it was unbelievable. It worked great, too! I'm no microbiologist, but it seems that there would be tons of yeast cells in the amount you can see.

FSBrewer · 01-07-2009, 01:19 PM

hmmm, for some reason I think I might even have a pack of that in the fridge. Is that the same as used for apfelwein? Anyhow, I think I'll try that on at least part of the batch. How long do you think I need to wait after adding it? Another 3 weeks?