Several bottles not carbed after 7 weeks in bottles

I brewed AHS's aniversary oktoberfest. I bottled this stuff back 7 weeks ago. After about 4 weeks I had a few bottles and they were all carbed decently. Not huge head or anything, but some head and good carbonation throughout.

Now the last 4 I've tried ad absolutely no carbonation at all. A slight pffft can be heard when I pop the top, but I pour it straight down in the glass and get no head, and it tastes completely flat.

I should note that I brewed this 'moktoberfest' style. With a lager yeast, but at around 60 degrees. This was the temp throughout fermentation and bottle conditioning. I put the priming sugar mixture in the bottom of the bottling bucket, and siphoned the beer on top of it, as I had read to do. I did not stir it manually, but had read that the swirling from siphoning should do the trick.

At this point I'm about to start kegging, so I'm considering just dumping the remaining of this batch in a keg and force carbing it. Is this a good idea? I don't really like the prospect of drinking it all flat. Is there anything else I should/could try?

Those 1st few bottles, were they stored differently from the others? What was the OG and the FG of the batch? I've had this happen once with a high gravity beer. The next big batch that I did, I added some yeast just before bottling and it came out great. I've never done a lager, so I can't really answer that question, except, I thought that lager beers needed to be cold fermented.

Kegging FTW. Have you tried bringing the conditioning up to 70 degrees or so? Maybe giving'em a little swirl along with it. Not sure that'd make a difference as I don't have any experience with lager yeasts.

If it's only a few bottles that aren't carbed I'm not sure I'd dump'em all into a keg. Maybe after a few more, but also keep in mind that you'll be causing a good amount of oxidation doing that and would likely want to force carb to drink quickly so the O2 doesn't kill your beer. Best of luck.

How were the bottles cleaned? What cleaner and sanitizer?

kapbrew13 said:

How were the bottles cleaned? What cleaner and sanitizer?

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Cleaned with water and a brush when needed. Sanitized with starsan using my vinator. Had one tonight, and it had an ever so slight about of detectable carbonation. I could deal wtih that amount. Not ideal, but I'd drink it.

I used all the same methods for my next two brews and they carbonated quickly and fully.

RugerRedhawk said:

Cleaned with water and a brush when needed. Sanitized with starsan using my vinator. Had one tonight, and it had an ever so slight about of detectable carbonation. I could deal wtih that amount. Not ideal, but I'd drink it.

I used all the same methods for my next two brews and they carbonated quickly and fully.

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Oddness. If your last two brews were fine, I'd chalk it up to some voodoo in your problem batch. Sugar needs yeast to eat it to create carbonation, so your yeast may have been misbehaving.