Flat beer in bottles

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Donnie1980

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I've made a few home batches of beer and have noticed that the beer in the recyclable 12 oz bottles that I fill are usually not completely flat but not completely fizzy per the norm. I also have a small collection of Fischer beer swing top bottles that I fill and they always come out completely carbonated. I use 3/4 to 1 cup of priming sugar for a 5 gal batch. I have even gone as far as measuring out the priming sugar per bottle (on the smaller test batches, not the full batches) and have the same issues with this.
I have assumed that the capping process is quite simple but this has completely stumped me. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I have 4 full batches of home brewed beer in the fridge that is questionable and would like to fix the issue before my next one. Unfortunately, kegging isn't an option right now for me.

Thanks everyone.
 
What you haven't told me is the time and temp of your carbing...those are the two most important factors,followed by gravity.

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." ;)
 
How long after bottling do you wait to open your first bottle? 3/4 c of priming sugar should work fine for a five gallon batch.
 
Should have included that sorry. Typically I wait 3 weeks and keep the beer in my wine cellar which stays around 68-72 degrees. Seems like I have been rushing these, I'll hold off putting the two batches I have in this room for a few weeks and check again. Thanks for the help.

DMc
 
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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.

Ah, not really. The minimum would be about a week after which time you could crack open a bottle and check carbonation. It will keep on conditionning afterwards but carbonation should be evident after 7 days no problem.
 
Ah, not really. The minimum would be about a week after which time you could crack open a bottle and check carbonation. It will keep on conditionning afterwards but carbonation should be evident after 7 days no problem.

You maybe, but quite a lot of us on here, especially those of us who answer this question 20-30 (or more) times a day, AND track the results with follow up posts beg to differ with you. 99.5% of the folks posting asking this very question are coming in here openning their beers between one and three weeks, and then start an "My Beer's Not Carbed" thread...and then USUALLY when there beer's been at or over the three week mark (at 70 degrees) they come back and say thank you revvy....

Same as my experience. YMMV....But you would be in the MINORITY based on experience around here.

To me "checking carbonation" to find your beer is not carbed or is green,early, is a waste of a beer that would have been drinkable...

If it works for you, fine....it's your beer. But a guy USUALLY coming in with a carbonation issue on here, is under three weeks, a higher grav beer, OR was under 70 degree for most if not all of the times.

If you want I can do a quick search of this topic and show you the post three week followup by the original posters.

*shrug*
 
Should have included that sorry. Typically I wait 3 weeks and keep the beer in my wine cellar which stays around 68-72 degrees. Seems like I have been rushing these, I'll hold off putting the two batches I have in this room for a few weeks and check again. Thanks for the help.

DMc

It won't hurt to agitate them to kick up the yeast and make sure the temp in the cellar is as CONSISTANTLY above 70 as you believe. I've found that even a few degrees lower can affect the carb time on beers. It may be a couple of degrees to you and me, BUT it's probably a big enough appearing swing to the little yeasty buggers.
 
To me "checking carbonation" to find your beer is not carbed or is green,early, is a waste of a beer that would have been drinkable...

I agree to an extent, but I also think its a worthwhile exercise to on one or two batches sample it as it is carbing to get an understanding of how time helps the greeness go away.
 
I agree to an extent, but I also think its a worthwhile exercise to on one or two batches sample it as it is carbing to get an understanding of how time helps the greeness go away.

It's people's beers if that floats your boat, have fun. I just never had gleaned anything substantive from that. Despite the rationalization that many new brewer say is for 'educational purposes' I find there's very little to be gleaned tasting a beer at 1 week, and again at 2....that to me just means there 2 less beers that are actually tasting good and are ready at the end. I don't buy budweiser because I don't like to taste "bad" beer. So why would I drink my own beer when it was "bad" especially since I know it's going to be delicious a few weeks later.

It's a great rationalization, and I hear it every time I make my assertion. But the thing to remember is that since every beer is different that 5 day old Ipa you may have decided to crack open is not going to taste anything like that 5 day old brown ale you opened early in your next batch. They're two different animals. There are so many tiny variations in things like ambient temp at fermentation and carbonation, pitch count phases of the moon, that even if you brewed your same batch again and cracked a bottle at the exact same early time on the previous batch, the beer, if you could remember how it tasted, more than likely wouldn't taste the same at that phase....Heck even in the same batch if you had grabbed a different bottle it may seem carbed or tasting differently at that point.

A tiny difference in temps between bottles in storage can affect the yeasties, speed them up or slow them down. Like if you store them in a closet against a warm wall, the beers closest to the heat source may be a tad warmer than those further way, so thy may carb/condition at slightly different rates. I usually store a batch in 2 seperate locations in my loft 1 case in my bedroom which is a little warmer, and the other in the closet in the lving room, which being in a larger space is a tad cooler, at least according to the thermostat next to that closet. It can be 5-10 degrees warmer in my bedroom. So I usually start with that case at three weeks. Giving the other half a little more time. Each one is it's own little microcosm, and although generally the should come up at the same time, it's not an automatic switch, and they all pop on. They are all going to come to tempo when their time is right...not a minute before, and then at some point they all will be done.


So you're not, to me learning anything special from it. But It's your beer, but there's not gonna be anything right or wrong at that point, except that you're out a beer that 2-3 weeks later you're gonna post something like"Sigh, they always say that last beer of the batch is the best, now if only I hadn't "sampled for educational purposes" all those weeks back I could be having another on of these delicious beers." ;)
 
I keg almost exclusively and found that tasting carbed 'green' beer vs. beer that is good to go on two batches was enough to make it worth while waiting (and why I don't use the 30 PSI to force carb quickly method).

I guess my viewpoint is unless someone tastes what green beer tastes like vs what beer that is in it's prime tastes like a few times, it's enough real world evidence to make them wait it out. Without having personal experience of green vs good beer, its touch to rationalize waiting on drinking it.
 
For the new brewers out there, checking carbonation after a week gives a better understanding on the process. This is not wasting beer. And at under 40 cents a bottle for homebrew that's cheap tuition for educating one's self on what goes on post fermentation, in the bottle.
It's false to say that after a week, a OG 1.050ish beer will not be carbed IF you've added the proper amount of priming sugar and have stored it at 70F.
The OP did not ask about the green beer. He asked about carbonation , and after one week, it SHOULD be carbed and will be drinkable. However, it will get better after 2 more weeks in the bottle.
 
The OP did not ask about the green beer. He asked about carbonation , and after one week, it SHOULD be carbed and will be drinkable. However, it will get better after 2 more weeks in the bottle.

Where in reality does it say it SHOULD be carbed after a week. I haven't seen it in over a decade involved with this stuff in one way or another...and defitintilely NOT the expereience of the new brewers who I've said this two 20-30 times a day for the last several years.....

These are just a sampling going back to 1-22-11 where in the intial post the op actually volunteered the information about time and temp in the bottle, NOT where one of us drew it out of him in the subsequent posts and he volunteered it. (I have nurses and doctors coming into my hospital room checking on me, so I didn't bother scrolling down, quoting the post and posting that here as well....I thought that was over kill.)

Have a porter thats been bottle conditioning for 2 weeks, just tried it and the carbonation is very weak. Should I be concerned, and any ideas of things to do to try to help the situation.


I added my priming sugar and bottled, but the beer started to smell a little sour. I just opened one up after one week in bottles and there is no carbonation whatsoever, and the beer tastes even more sour. In addition there are these little white flakes floating in the beer that look like the spawn of my floating "infection" or whatever it was.


I brewed my first batch a few weeks ago and tomorrow will be two weeks from when I bottled it. I'm a very impatient person and tried one last Thursday (9 days after bottling). Now I was expecting it to be very flat but when I poured it, there was a very large head - leading me to believe that it was carbonated enough. Upon tasting it, it tasted rather flat. This happened again yesterday. Is this normal in the conditioning process or did I do something wrong in the bottling process? I thought the beer tasted a little funny but since I'm new at this it's kind of hard to tell when the beer isn't fully carbonated like I'm used to. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I'm a little pissed because I tried my IPA at 7 days and 14 days of bottle conditioning and both samples are flat.
Quick details:
OG: 1.076, FG: 1.020
ABV 7.5%
5 oz. priming sugar for 5 gallons
Two week in primary, two weeks in secondary (dry hopped).

I boiled the sugar in 1 cup of water; added it to bottom of bottling bucket and racked on top of it using a nylon bag to catch any sediment. I've sampled from two separate cases so if there was any unevenness it should have been evident in one bottle and not another...if that makes sense. No bottle bombs either.
So, is there a recommended next step? Drink flat beer? Open them up and add a little extra sugar?


Where I come from, 1 occurance is an anamoly, 2 instances MAY be a coincidence but three is an epidemic or a statement of fact.....And I have this info going back years...along with enough followup posts where the poster has come back on x weeks later and his beer is fine...

In fact I believe I was 4 for 4 with these answers as well, and they all came back fine, after a period of waiting.

I've been doing this for a few years now, hence writing the carbonation blog when I got tired of writing the same answer on here several times a day. So you're not going to convince me that a beer not being carbed up at 1 week is anything wrong.....I can just keep searching for the keywords and posting the results.....if I really cared enough to try to convince you, or prove you wrong...which I really don't care to either way.

I don't really care who's brewing 'nads are bigger. I just care about giving the new brewer the best, most accurate advice possible and to keep him off the ledge. Noone needs to f with their beer if it's undercarbed of not in the first 3-6 weeks of bottling.....99.95% of the time it will be eventually. I just have seen a few batches dumped or turned into bottle bombs because someone thought there was a problem when there wasn't at all.....

And the funny thing is, we've been so sidetraked on these silly debate about early beers both greeness and carbing, that I'm the only one that has actually noticed and addressed the fact that the OP's beers supposedly HAVE been over 70 degrees for OVER three weeks....I'm fully aware about ALL sides of this discussions, including the details of his situation....

;)
 
There's a big difference between "carbed beer" and "ready to drink beer" just like there is a big difference between "finished fermenting beer" and "ready to bottle beer."

Just because you've hit your FG doesn't mean it's time to bottle, and just because you get a "hiss" and bubbles when you open a beer doesn't mean it's time to drink....

:mug:
 
There's a big difference between "carbed beer" and "ready to drink beer" just like there is a big difference between "finished fermenting beer" and "ready to bottle beer."

Just because you've hit your OG doesn't mean it's time to bottle, and just because you get a "hiss" and bubbles when you open a beer doesn't mean it's time to drink....

:mug:

+1, and as Poindexer's video in my blong does show, a lot of "activity" often occurs in the one week or even 2 week mark...it may be "fizzy" but fizzy and a fully set carb are not the same thing, and a lot of brewers just equate a pop and his with a beer being drinkable, when the bubbles and head proteins don't tend to come up fully for a few more weeks. (I usually call that "newb carb" and find that a lot of new brewers who tend to kill their two cases off in a few days, don't experience true carbonation and the pleasures thereof, until they actually get a pipeline going, and have their first 5 or 6 week old full carbed and conditioned wonderfully little puppy! Then the come back with an "aha" moment.

:mug:

Like he shows in 1 week, all the hissing, all the foaming can and does happen, but until it's dissolved back into the beer, your don't really have carbonation, with tiny bubbles coming out of solution happening actually inside the glass, not JUST what's happening on the surface.

 
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Thanks for all the feed back everyone. I was more intrigued that the beer was different in the swing tops vs the capped though. That made me believe that the capping process was more involved and that I had made an error when capping. Either way I'll hold off a while longer and see what happens with the 12 oz bottles and research the previous post before starting a new thread.
 
Thanks for all the feed back everyone. I was more intrigued that the beer was different in the swing tops vs the capped though. That made me believe that the capping process was more involved and that I had made an error when capping. Either way I'll hold off a while longer and see what happens with the 12 oz bottles and research the previous post before starting a new thread.

So what size are each of the bottles?What size are the swingers? In many of our eperiences (again as borne out on here repeatedly usually the larger the size the longer the beer needs to carb up (and condition).

Revvy said:
.
A larger volume sized bottle usually needs more time to carb AND condition. I have some pints, 22 oz bombers and other sizes that I often use, but since I enter contests I usually also do a sixer or two of standard 12 ouncers for entering. And inevitably the 12 ouncers are done at least a week faster than the larger bottles....some times two weeks ahead of time...

It takes longer for the yeasties to convert the larger volume in the bigger bottles to enough co2 in the headspace to be reabsorbed back into the solution...A ration I don't know how much...

Big Kahuna gives a good explanation here...
Simple. It's the ration of contact area just like in a keg. The c02 will need to pressurize the head space (Which takes LESS TIME) in a bigger bottle (More Yeast and sugar, roughly the same head space) but then it has to force that c02 into solution through the same contact area...thus it takes longer.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity 12 ounce beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer. As do larger volumes....
(But I know nothing about this stuff, and never answer these things. ;)

Neither does this guy. [quote="VegasBrew, post: 2654407"]A...g: (And they will. ;) Like everyone elses. )
 
The Fischer bottles are 24 oz swing tops. FYI - they are 4.09/ea here in north Texas and the beer actually taste great if you can find the blondes and they have tiny labels around the neck that come off easily.
 
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