Yeast and barrel aging beer

Anyone do much barrel aging of there homebrew? For my first time I brewed a stout which was in the primary/secondary for 4 weeks total, in the bourbon barrel for 6 weeks and bottle for 2 weeks. When I tried it last night there was really no carbonation.
My question, Think the yeast is fresh enough to consume priming sugar and produce CO2 after that long in secondary and barrel? Or am I just paranoid and need to be patient for the full 4-6 weeks n bottle, or potentially a little longer?

Thanks!

Probably. If you're getting little swipes of trub from primary to bourbon barrel, then again to bottling bucket. It should have enough yeast in suspension to carbonate. My bet is you're not letting it condition long enough in the bottle. It also helps to let the bottles condition in a dark, room temperature location. I use the top shelf of a clothes closet in a spare bedroom and that works pretty well.

I would agree with the waiting. Heavy beers take awhile. Most of the time we get upset when they dont carb right, then we forget about a bottle and find it a few months/year later and its perfect. Hardest thing in brewing is patience.

Thank you both. I agree with the patience being the hardest thing.

I always plan to give it 4-6 weeks but then I usually try one after 2 weeks and was just a little surprised it wasn't more carbonated so far.

Hopefully another month will be kind to me as the brew tasted wonderful minus that flat flavor/feeling.

If you got any kind of a hiss when you removed the bottle, you had carbonation going on. There are times when i'll taste test a beer at a week in the bottle to see how it's coming along and I don't expect much carbonation. I'll get the hiss letting me know there's CO2 being produced and usually drink a nice flat beer. There just isn't enough CO2 to saturate the beer in the bottle yet.

It also helps to chill your bottles for a full 48 hours prior to consumption to ensure the liquid re-absorbs as much CO2 as possible. Cold beer has a higher CO2 holding capacity than warm beer, so chilling it thoroughly for a few days can help the beer re-absorb maximum CO2 back into solution.

There is also no harm at all in using about 3g of fresh yeast at bottling time after extended aging. Lalvin Prise de Mousse (CY1118) wine yeast works great.