Flat Beer

This has never happened to me.

1. Midwest Supplies Golden Ticket Rye Pale Ale extract kit, met the start/end gravities exactly. fermented at 65-68F for 3 weeks in a pail.

2. used the provided corn sugar (boiled in the correct amount of water - cooled) poured in my bottling bucket. Racked in the beer, bottling 10, stirring gently, repeat, so as to keep the sugar well suspended and distributed.
Let sit for 4 weeks at 65-68F

I tased one - completely flat.
I tasted another, in a different size bottle, and from a different time in the bottling process (i.e. 5 minutes later and stirred) - Flat.

What could have gone wrong?
No bottle bombs.

Is it possible the Corn Sugar is no good?

I've had that same thing happen. The remedy was to get the room temperature above 70 degrees. Those few degrees made all the difference.

swirl the cases of beer to get the yeast back in suspension and bump the temps up to 70 degrees, see what happens.

>.swirl the cases of beer to get the yeast back in suspension and bump the temps up to 70 degrees, see what happens.

OK - I will try this.
But for the crappy generic Mr Beer yeast I have never had this problem.
This is White Labs California Ale 001 which I assume is better quality.
It did its job as there is alcohol, and the gravity dropped from 1.042 -> 1.01

ArcLight said:

>.swirl the cases of beer to get the yeast back in suspension and bump the temps up to 70 degrees, see what happens.

OK - I will try this.
But for the crappy generic Mr Beer yeast I have never had this problem.
This is White Labs California Ale 001 which I assume is better quality.
It did its job as there is alcohol, and the gravity dropped from 1.042 -> 1.01

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Nice!! Some strains are just more flocculant than others, and need a bit of encouragement from time to time. Encouragement in the form of rousing, or swirling. Not a sign of quality, but a simple genetic trait.

OK - I shook the bottles, got all the settled yeast back into suspension, and have them in the computer room where its around 80.

Since primary fermentation has already taken place, I assume carbonating at 80 wont cause any off flavors.


I'm still going to try some table sugar instead of the corn sugar for the next batch

both sugars will do the trick but i think you have to use slightly less cane sugar, check on that.

Did you happen to cold crash? One of my last batches I did a two day cold crash, and it never fully carbed up. I'd say 1/4 carbonation that I was trying for. Every other batch I don't cold crash and they carbonate very well. I just popped my Strawberry Blonde in the fridge after only two days, as with a quick 1 hour test bottle chilled in the fridge, it was fully carbed, from sitting at 75F.

bechard said:

Did you happen to cold crash? One of my last batches I did a two day cold crash, and it never fully carbed up. I'd say 1/4 carbonation that I was trying for. Every other batch I don't cold crash and they carbonate very well. I just popped my Strawberry Blonde in the fridge after only two days, as with a quick 1 hour test bottle chilled in the fridge, it was fully carbed, from sitting at 75F.

Click to expand...

if you cold crash before the beer is fully fermented you would have overcarbonated beer, bottle bombs.

i don't think thats what he's saying.