Scarthingmoor

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I've had a batch of red that has been in the bottles for about 5-6 weeks. It has almost no carbonation, to the point where I decided to open the bottles, add a little sugar and a bit of yeast to try to get things moving. During this process, I opened about 10 bottles, each with very little CO2 escaping when I opened the bottles. The 11th one frothed over when I opened it.

What gives? How long can carbonation take? Anyone else had this problem of very uneven carbonation between bottles?

BeerBrewBob

Recipes 

Priming can be tedious, no doubt. Are you using Corn Sugar or table sugar? How are you priming.... Are you mixing the sugar with water on the stove and then pouring it into your bottling bucket before adding the wort or manually adding sugar to each bottle?
Also, where are you storing your bottles? I have come to believe that letting them sit close to a heat source like a dryer could accelerate some, without affecting the whole batch, hence your issue of the 11th beer spewing but not the others. It could be a combination of both storage and incorrect sugar saturation.

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Scarthingmoor

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priming each bottle individually with corn sugar. All should be the exact same temp (maybe 68-72 F).

BIGREDIOWAN

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I've never done it that way and that doesn't mean the way you're doing it doesn't work. I've always boiled up my water with my priming sugar, cooled it down, and then added it to my bottling bucket while the wort is filling the bottling bucket up. I've never had an issue doing it that way?

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Millsteg

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I'm having the same issue with mine after 2 weeks. I've opened up roughly about 10 bottles and only 1 had good carbonation. Glad I'm going to be kegging and force carbing after this batch so not to worry about it.

unionrdr

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Revvy

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So, just because you're openning your beer too early and complaining that your beer isn't ready yet, you think kegging is the magic answer, when in truth PATIENCE is the magic answer...and even if you keg, you still often need to wait the same amount of time for the beer to condition and not taste like crap.....Just because a beer can carb quick, doesn't necessarily mean your beer isn't still gonna be green.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.


Temp and gravity are the two factors that contribute to the time it takes to carb beer. But if a beer's not ready yet, or seems low carbed, and you added the right amount of sugar to it, then it's not stalled, it's just not time yet.

Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."

Lazy Llama came up with a handy dandy chart to determine how long something takes in brewing, whether it's fermentation, carbonation, bottle conditioning....



If a beer isn't carbed by "x number of weeks" you just have to give them more time. If you added your sugar, then the beer will carb up eventually, it's really a foolroof process. All beers will carb up eventually. A lot of new brewers think they have to "troubleshoot" a bottling issue, when there really is none, the beer knows how to carb itself. In fact if you run beersmiths carbing calculator, some lower grav beers don't even require additional sugar to reach their minimum level of carbonation. Just time.

At two weeks I wouldn't expect ANY of my beers to be carbed yet.....

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unionrdr

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Millsteg

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At first I was like... this guys kind of a jerk. And then I was like.... ok he's kinda coming around. And then I was like.... this guy really has some pretty good insight. And then finally i was like.... Ok he might now what he's talking about.

Thanks for straightening my ass out.

ThickHead

Recipes 

This might be a candidate for addition to Revvy's sig.

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