No Carbonation after 12 Weeks. Any ideas?

Hello Everyone.

I have been trying to bottle carbonate a low gravity Belgian Wit for almost 12 weeks now. I have tried to be patience with this process, but I think something has gone wrong.

OG = 1.042
FG = 1.010

Partial mash with DME. Fermented for 19 days in primary, 1 vial of White Labs yeast, fermentation went normal. Cold crashed at 35 for 2 days, then bottled 5 gallons with 4.5 oz of corn sugar, boiled with water and well stirred. Kept at 70 for 3 weeks, then tried one. Refrigerated for 2 days, opened the bottle, there was a small hiss, but the beer was flat..zero carbonation.

So, I shook them up..waited another week, same zero carbonation.
Repeat.
Repeat.
....

I checked the caps, they appear to have sealed fine.

About 6 weeks ago it was getting cold in the garage, so i brought them inside and even brought them up to 80 degrees for a week using a heating pad. But carbonation has not improved at all.

There is a decent amount of yeast on the bottom of the bottle; around the same amount i normally see in my bottle conditioned beers.

I have probably opened 10-12 beers at this point. Is adding fresh yeast my only option here? From what I have read, I really didn't think this would be a problem with a low gravity ale. Any idea's what could have gone wrong? Everything seemed very normal with this batch.

2 days in the fridge is not long enough. That hiss you heard when opening is all of the co2 leaving the headspace. You need to give your beers at least a week in the fridge. Sometimes they'll be even better after 2 weeks.

What WL yeast did you use? Some are notorious for stalling, but if it's just WLP001, that's kinda weird.

Try giving every bottle a gentle shake to get that yeast into suspension. But it should be carbonating after so long. I have some dubbels that took almost 2 months to carbonate properly, so... keep waiting?

And I definitely leave my homebrew in the fridge as long as possible before consuming... but usually, 48hrs is plenty.

OK, I will try a full week in the fridge.

But, in my experience, 2 days has always been fine. I am convinced there is not enough C02 on those bottle to carbonate the beer. This is a "very" slight hiss, and the beer is 100% flat. Flat as tap water. No bubbles at all.

I used WLP400. Fermentation seemed to go fine.

Callacave said:

2 days in the fridge is not long enough. That hiss you heard when opening is all of the co2 leaving the headspace. You need to give your beers at least a week in the fridge. Sometimes they'll be even better after 2 weeks.

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This is not true. The same amount of carbonation is in the beer at room temperature or when it's been in the fridge for 2 days or 2 years. Chilling the beer for a while is a good idea though because it helps settle yeast and other particles out of suspension that can act as nucleation sites and cause the CO2 to come out of solution faster.

That's very strange though that you don't have any carbonation. Are you sure it was priming sugar you added? Is it possible you mixed it up with a nonfermentable sugar you had around like lactose or maltodextrin or something.

With such a short time between pitching and bottling there's just no reason for the yeast not to be active anymore.

Maybe the caps were defective? Have you used them on any other batch?

As far as I know it was corn sugar. It was from a kit and was labeled as such, although I did not taste it. The caps seem fine and have worked well on other batches.

I've only had the problem once, I ended up blending my bottles that would not carbonate into a new brew. I took a batch of brew that was actively fermenting and poured an equal amount of my uncarbonated bottles into it, air locked and let it go. I let it finish as usual and ended up with a nice drinkable carbonated shelf full of beer.

peterj said:

This is not true. The same amount of carbonation is in the beer at room temperature or when it's been in the fridge for 2 days or 2 years. Chilling the beer for a while is a good idea though because it helps settle yeast and other particles out of suspension that can act as nucleation sites and cause the CO2 to come out of solution faster.

Click to expand...

Sorry, but the carbonation isn't in the beer. It's in the headspace. Of course there's some co2 in the beer already, but a lot of it is up in the headspace if it hasn't been chilled for long enough. This headspace builds up pressure. When you chill liquid down it allows co2 to easily diffuse into it.

1 week in the fridge is usually optimum for the headspace and beer to equalize after naturally carbonating.

Seems something else is going on though. If the OP has been farting around for 12 weeks with this you would think that they might have enough time to carb up even at room temps.

Have to agree with peterj that whether the beer is warm or chilled doesn't matter, the same amount of CO2 will be dissolved regardless. This was discussed in the science section recently.

Something else is going on. I would suspect the caps didn't seal properly, or maybe lactose was added instead of corn sugar (this can be an easy mistake if you have both on hand)?

Sounds dumb, but are you positive you added the priming solution? There is always trapped C02 in beer which could explain the small hiss when you open them. Stranger things have happened...

I'm 100% sure that I added the priming solution. I boiled with a cup or so of water, cooled, added to the bucket and racked on top. I also stirred well before filling the bottles.

I did soak the bottles in star san before and there was definitely some foam. However, everything I have read says this is not an issue.

This was an Austin homebrew kit and the bag was clearly labeled priming sugar.

Visually, the caps look fine. I have held several under water with no visible leaks.

My only guess here is mislabeled priming sugar or dead/slow/tired yeast.

I made a Double IPA purchased from Austin Homebrew. It tastes great but also has little to no carbonation. The kit came with 4.5 oz of corn sugar for priming, and I followed the instructions verbatim. What other type of sugar and how much could I use next time to avoid a flat beer?