Help! Of the last five batches I've bottled, three have turned out essentially flat. To the best of my knowledge and (poor) record-keeping, my process did not vary notably between the two successful batches and the three failed ones.
I'm hoping the good people of HBT will help me to identify
a) ideas on what I need to change to avoid this problem in the future
b) whether or not anything is salvageable from what I have already bottled
Here's my process:
1) Boil ~4-5 gallons of wort. Chill and transfer to a fermentor without trying to filter out break or other solids.
2) Primary fermentation in a 6.5 gallon bucket for ~1 week
3) Secondary fermentation for 2-3 weeks split between a 3 gallon carboy and a 1 gallon carboy. I don't want to get into the "secondary" debate, but the main reason I do this is to free my sole bucket for other uses (ie bottling or more brewing).
4) Siphon the contents of both carboys back to the bucket for bottling. I use 3.5 oz of dissolved corn sugar and add it in stages to the beer to encourage reasonable mixing.
5) Beer is in bottles for at least two weeks before I sample it.
Some more-specific details:
1) Batches 1, 4 and 5 are the ones that are flat. Batches 2 and 3 are good.
2) Much of batch 1 was accidentally exposed to oxygen during siphoning into the bottling bucket because I didn't notice that a cracked racking cane was aerating the beer. Until the failures of batches 4 and 5, I assumed that this was responsible for the problems with #1.
3) The successful batches were both dry-hopped, and both had higher gravities than any of the failed batches.
4) Batches 4 and 5 were bottled 2.5 weeks ago, so there's still the potential for more carbonation. But batch 1 was bottled over two months ago and hasn't showed any signs of improving.
5) Most of the beer goes into 12oz bottles, but I usually fill 2-3 20oz bottles as well. For batch 1, the 20oz bottles seemed to have much better carbonation than the 12oz bottles.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
I'm hoping the good people of HBT will help me to identify
a) ideas on what I need to change to avoid this problem in the future
b) whether or not anything is salvageable from what I have already bottled
Here's my process:
1) Boil ~4-5 gallons of wort. Chill and transfer to a fermentor without trying to filter out break or other solids.
2) Primary fermentation in a 6.5 gallon bucket for ~1 week
3) Secondary fermentation for 2-3 weeks split between a 3 gallon carboy and a 1 gallon carboy. I don't want to get into the "secondary" debate, but the main reason I do this is to free my sole bucket for other uses (ie bottling or more brewing).
4) Siphon the contents of both carboys back to the bucket for bottling. I use 3.5 oz of dissolved corn sugar and add it in stages to the beer to encourage reasonable mixing.
5) Beer is in bottles for at least two weeks before I sample it.
Some more-specific details:
1) Batches 1, 4 and 5 are the ones that are flat. Batches 2 and 3 are good.
2) Much of batch 1 was accidentally exposed to oxygen during siphoning into the bottling bucket because I didn't notice that a cracked racking cane was aerating the beer. Until the failures of batches 4 and 5, I assumed that this was responsible for the problems with #1.
3) The successful batches were both dry-hopped, and both had higher gravities than any of the failed batches.
4) Batches 4 and 5 were bottled 2.5 weeks ago, so there's still the potential for more carbonation. But batch 1 was bottled over two months ago and hasn't showed any signs of improving.
5) Most of the beer goes into 12oz bottles, but I usually fill 2-3 20oz bottles as well. For batch 1, the 20oz bottles seemed to have much better carbonation than the 12oz bottles.
Any ideas?
Thanks!