When to call a failed carbonation?

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Jsbeckton

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I bottled an Belgian Dark Strong (10.5% ABV) back in march and it is still not very carbed. I know that there are issues with yeast and these high gravity beers carbing up so I made sure to repitch fresh belgian yeast when I bottled. Now here I am 4 months later and although I can see yeast in the bottles and have occasionally stirred it up in the 75F room I have almost no carb. Should I continue to wait or give up?
 
Also, I was considering trying something like pouring the bottles out into a bucket and draining into a keg for force carbing. I could try to do this under a blanket of CO2 but not sure I can avoid oxidation. I hoped to age this beer for several years and was very careful to avoid oxygenation so now I am bummed that might have been a wasted effort and the beer is doomed to not last long after trying something like this.
 
I would have thought after 4 months they would be carbed, I know higher grav beers take longer, but that seems long enough. Is it possible you forgot priming sugar?

Maybe open 1 up, add about 1/2 what would be normal sugar for your style and recap and then check it in like 3 or 4 weeks and see if there is any change.
 
If you plan on saving them for years, then just let them keep conditioning. I've had one or two really big beers take as long as 6-8 months to carb up perfectly.
 
Let 'em condition til atleast September before touching another one. Should be darn perfect by Thanksgiving time.
 
you could try adding a bit of champagne yeast to one or two bottles and check those after a month or so. if that works, add it to the others.
 
I didn't forget the priming sugar. Guess I will wait another few months and hope for the best before disturbing them. The beer tastes great so I would be thrilled if it would just carb without having to mess with it.
 
Leave it - my 10% wee heavy didn't get carbed until maybe 8 months in the bottle, and yep, I was worried at 4 months too.

Leave em be. If they're not carbed in November, then consider doing something, but I wouldn't mess around with them now.
 
JonM said:
Leave it - my 10% wee heavy didn't get carbed until maybe 8 months in the bottle, and yep, I was worried at 4 months too.

Leave em be. If they're not carbed in November, then consider doing something, but I wouldn't mess around with them now.

^this. Your gonna want to age it anyway. I'd eat my hat if it wasn't better carbed and better tasting in another 4 months or so. My last Belgian strong was just as described above -even re-pitched in the bucket. -yer good, relax.
 
This is encouraging. I will forget about the until late fall and see it that helps before doing anything. Is there a way to tell if its a capping issue? I have shaken the bottles periodically and didn't get any leakage but that may not mean anything.
 
Seeing yeast on the bottom with very little carb does not necessarily mean you have a capping issue. It's possible, but unlikely. It likely means there was a good amount of yeast in suspension when you racked and bottled that has now floc'ed out.

Just give it time. If it hasn't changed at 10-12 months, then you can consider pitching yeast or adding sugar to the bottles.
 
If they never carb up you could carbonate each one individually just before you want to drink it. Use one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/LiquidBread-The-Carbonater/dp/B0064OKADS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374668517&sr=8-1&keywords=the+carbonater

31XpVBeoJ6L._SY450_.jpg


I use one to carbonate my hydrometer sample and it works great.
 
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I think the problem is the yeast, not the lack of sugar. You're at 10.5%. The yeast are drunk and sluggish at that ABV. The solutions are either patience, or champagne yeast. I'd favour the former, as the latter risks oxidizing your beer.
 
show me a beer that is flat at 4 months and perfectly carbed at 12 and i'll eat my hat.
 
show me a beer that is flat at 4 months and perfectly carbed at 12 and i'll eat my hat.

+1 something is amiss if you're not carbed after a couple of months. I also cringe at the idea of letting homebrew sit around at 75F for 10 months, regardless of style.
 
show me a beer that is flat at 4 months and perfectly carbed at 12 and i'll eat my hat.

"Now here I am 4 months later and although I can see yeast in the bottles and have occasionally stirred it up in the 75F room I have almost no carb"


having almost no carb, doesn't mean it's flat, just means it's a bit slow getting there. Obviously progmac doesn't have much experience with Abbey's. Even people who buy Chimay for example will let it condition for at least another few months.

So here's my thoughts: go buy a rubber maid roughneck tote, fill the storage tote with all the bottles you can fit upright and place the storage container in a closet. Since they're in a darker place and will naturally be cooler than 75*, you can be more reassured they mature even better.
 
:smack:
And it's a Trappist, not an Abbey.

Trappist MONKS live in Abbeys.....

Therfore Trapist Ales are a subset of Abbey Ales.

As to a Chimey being flat or not at purchase, I'd assume a comerical venture would sell a finished product, but how long it 'finishes' I don't know, and despite my prior statement, I'm with the 'let it sit another 4 months and check' crowd, after all he is aging it.
 
:smack:

Trappist MONKS live in Abbeys.....

Therfore Trapist Ales are a subset of Abbey Ales.

As to a Chimey being flat or not at purchase, I'd assume a comerical venture would sell a finished product, but how long it 'finishes' I don't know, and despite my prior statement, I'm with the 'let it sit another 4 months and check' crowd, after all he is aging it.

There is a very specific distinction between the two. The characteristic of the beer is different as well. Be careful about calling people out, that's obnoxious.
 
from wiki:
"The designation "abbey beers" (Bières d'Abbaye or Abdijbier) originally applied to any monastic or monastic-style beer. After introduction of an official Trappist beer designation by the International Trappist Association in 1997, it came to mean products similar in style or presentation to monastic beers"

So until 1997, there was no distinction between Trapist Ales (as a subset of Abbey's) and Abbey ales. It wasn't until the late 90's that the distinction became important. Both are known from making such wonderful things as Dubbels and Tripples. This can be seen along with the 1999 the Union of Belgian Brewers introduction of a "Certified Belgian Abbey Beer" as essentailly a marking/branding move as way of distinguishing them.

As for them being different. I'd argue that Trappist and other Abbey ales (all pretty much from Belgium, or in the Belgium style) are more similar to one another than they would be to other styles. Infact, other abbey produce Dubbels and Tripples. Which by their nature should be more in common with one another than say a Stout. This doesn't mean they share the same blandness with each other that the BMC's of the world, just that the distinction is less than your previous post implies.
 
show me a beer that is flat at 4 months and perfectly carbed at 12 and i'll eat my hat.

Perhaps its semantics, but the OP said it is "still not very carbed" and has "almost no carb" - not necessarily that it is "flat". That suggests to me that patience may be the best remedy, based on my experience with big beers (and in particular, big dark strong Belgians). I've definitely had beers that were under-carbed and very disappointing at 4 months, but which developed into excellent beers at 8-12. The biggest disappointment with some batches is that I opened and drank so many bottles while the beer was too young, and had half a batch or less left when it finally came into its own.
 
A suggestion;

A dose of champagne yeast and warm temps and you will be drinking a carbed, strong Belgian in two weeks, I promise.
 
Perhaps its semantics, but the OP said it is "still not very carbed" and has "almost no carb" - not necessarily that it is "flat". That suggests to me that patience may be the best remedy, based on my experience with big beers (and in particular, big dark strong Belgians). I've definitely had beers that were under-carbed and very disappointing at 4 months, but which developed into excellent beers at 8-12. The biggest disappointment with some batches is that I opened and drank so many bottles while the beer was too young, and had half a batch or less left when it finally came into its own.
My primary point is that it is absolutely unnecessary and really pretty absurd to wait 8-12 months for any beer to carb. Wait 8-12 months or years for a beer to have a different flavor profile, I can accept that. But for basic carbonation?
 
I have this issue too. Made a WEEEEEEEEEEE Heavy (11.5), added priming sugar, and waited. It's been 8 months and still no carbing. I poured 2 into one of those brown PET bottles yesterday, put the ball lock carb fitting on it and stuck it in the kegerator. I'd pour them all into a keg but this beer is going to need years to mature. I don't feel like tieing up a keg that long.

Good luck with yours.
 
Absolutely common and expected in 10% ABV beers.

https://cdn.homebrewtalk.com/gallery/data/1/medium/chart.jpg

Ha. Hey Llama, show me your data.

Also, longer is a relative term. In my experience, that's a few days longer. Not months.

I'm looking through my brew log:
8.3% Sampled at 14 days; carb solid.
9.2% Sampled at 16 days; carb solid.
8.9% Sampled at 14 days; carb solid.
6.0% Sampled at 7 days; carb solid.
9.6% Sampled at 10 days; carb solid.
7.0% Sampled at 7 days; carb solid.
8.2% Sampled at 11 days; carb solid.
8.1% Sampled at 13 days; carb solid.
7.9% Sampled at 8 days; carb solid.
8.4% Sampled at 15 days; carb solid.

n=10
 
I don't think any of us are saying that this always happens with high gravity beers. We're just saying that it can happen, and when it does you have a few options. You can open bottles and re-pitch, force carb individual bottles, or wait it out. For those of us that have chosen to wait it out, it can take a long while.

I've had this problem once in my brewing history, and it wasn't even high gravity. It was only a 6.5% beer. My theory was that the yeast I used was high flocculating yeast that had settled out to the point of there being very little left in suspension. On bottling day I likely racked very clear beer that had an extremely low cell count which caused an extremely slow carbonation process. The beer literally took over 10 months to carb, but it did eventually. Sure, I wasn't happy about the wait, but I had enough homebrew to keep my happy. Since then I always swish the racking cane in to the yeast cake to pick up a little yeast when racking to a bottle bucket to ensure I have a decent amount of yeast.

Of coarse the other possibility in some cases is that a person may have used a yeast that didn't have a high enough alcohol tolerance to handle the job of carbonating. In that case you can indeed re-pitch a different yeast in the bottle. In that case I would be careful not to pitch yeast that is going to massively attenuate and overcarb or dry out the beer. Maybe instead of champagne yeast I would consider using an ale yeast with a higher tolerance than the yeast used for fermentation, if at all possible.
 
The beauty of champagne yeast is that it has a really difficult time metabolizing complex sugars, but will tear up simple sugars in a high ABV, low ph beer in no time. I've heard wine yeast experts say that it can't even metabolize maltose.

I will say it again, if you want to speed up carbing on big beers, buy a $1.50 packet of Champagne yeast. I've had 10% Tripels carb in three days.
 
A few clarifications, the beer has some carb so not completely flat and I used the same belgian strain that got it to the FG just fine (pitched fresh yeast).

If I were to try the champagne route, do I need to dump everything into a bucket and mix? seems that this would end up being oxygenated. If I had to combine all of the beer again I'd be inclined to just force carb. Then again, if those yeast ever wake up....boom!
 
rehydrate the yeast and add it to the bottles with an eye dropper or your finger over a straw. Couple drops will do.
 
progmac said:
show me a beer that is flat at 4 months and perfectly carbed at 12 and i'll eat my hat.

Update, after oh I guess about 7 months now, the beer is carbed! Thanks everyone who convinced me to wait it out.
 
I made a barleywine about 4 months ago, same problem. 1.094 OG attenuated down to 1.017. The yeast was toast. I should've added a bottling pitch, but I just went ahead with the priming sugar. It's still nowhere close to carbed. But on the bright side the bottle that I cracked open last month tasted pretty good!

I'm gonna give it 8 months, if there's still nothing I might open them up and add 1 ml of rehydrated yeast to each bottle, then re-cap.
 
~I'm not gonna say anything here~

yet, you did.

so, tell us; what is the Chapeau du Jour? and when do you expect to dine? ;)

I just caught wind of this thread and would have reminded everyone if you hadn't brought it up.

Bon Appétit!
 
I didn't tell you guys this, but my hat is made from Doritos. So that's a big help.
 
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