Save this Red!

Little bit of a story... but it seems pertinent.

My first batch ever was a NB Irish Red extract kit with Danstar Nottingham. Was 2 points below on the OG. Fermented along at about 72 for a week, until a house fire knocked out power for six weeks. Unable to cool the primary, it sat near 80 for the next few more weeks, fermenting vigorously, until the krausen fell and all activity stopped very abruptly at about 3 weeks.

Bottled at 3.5 or 4 weeks, skipping secondary. Snatched a taste right before and it had the cheap vodka twang I expected it would. Capped everything up, came back in two weeks. Cracked one open and realized I'd forgotten to prime. Wrote the batch off and set it aside to be dumped.

Was just rooting out in my wood shed looking for a container to store my empties and saw my cooler. Opened it up to find easily a case of the red. :rockin: It's been subjected to temperatures between 30F and 95F and sitting out there for 6 months.

Cracked one open just now in an attempt to learn what rotten beer tastes and looks like. And then to my surprise, I find it's not bad.



It's actually a pretty decent red. Very reminiscent of Rock Bottom's Raccoon Red. Not as clear, but not very cloudy either.



I took a reading for FG and came out at 1.080. Exactly where it should be.

I suddenly want to try to save this batch. What can I do to try to bring it back from the dead? I'd imagine the yeast has to be dead by now, so I don't think it's going to be as easy as open, pop in a carb tab, and cap back up.

I take it you mean an FG of 1.008.

If so, you could prime with cane sugar, corn sugar,DME, any sugar really and you'd probably have enough yeast still in your beer to get carbonation. If you're really worried about not having enough yeast in there it's not unheard of to prime with also an addition of some yeast. Adding yeast when priming is sometimes done with "high alcohol content" tolerant yeasts to ensure carbonation when the primary yeast is known to not be able to re-ferment at those levels of ABV, or might have been severely depleted before bottling from cold crash induced dormancy.

Is there any way to tell whether there's viable yeast left, other than priming and re-capping?

Edit: Yep, 1.008.

Suppose you could pour some into some kind of airtight container (PET bottle), add some sugar, seal, leave it for a few hours, or a bit longer, in a warm place and see if there's any expansion/pressure build up.

Do not dump them into a bucket or other vessel to prime. You will risk oxidation by doing so. Go to the LHBS and grab a bag of Coopers carb drops and a fresh pack of notty. Uncap on at a time and add one carb drop per 12 oz bottle and a couple grains of of the yeast, recap, and let the yeast do it's thing for a few weeks.

Toga said:

Do not dump them into a bucket or other vessel to prime. You will risk oxidation by doing so. Go to the LHBS and grab a bag of Coopers carb drops and a fresh pack of notty. Uncap on at a time and add one carb drop per 12 oz bottle and a couple grains of of the yeast, recap, and let the yeast do it's thing for a few weeks.

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Was considering the tabs.

Have a 0.1g resolution scale due to be delivered today, and about 5 lbs of dextrose sitting here.

If I use the scale and patience, can I save the cost of the tabs? Or do they work better than dextrose?

thadius856 said:

Was considering the tabs.

Have a 0.1g resolution scale due to be delivered today, and about 5 lbs of dextrose sitting here.

If I use the scale and patience, can I save the cost of the tabs? Or do they work better than dextrose?

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I reckon you'll be OK without the tabs.

Haven't used the carbonation tabs myself but I started out with Mr. Beer so I was priming each bottle individually with granulated sugar. Worked fine for me. If you have a small funnel or some cone shaped item it might be a little easier.

The carb drops are just per-measured and very convenient when bottling just a few bottles or in a scenario where you forgot to add the priming sugar when bottling. You can easily just add some sugar to the bottles to achieve the same thing. If you do go the the LHBS looking for carb drops stay away from the muntons carb tabs. They tend to leave floaties in your beer.

Toga said:

The carb drops are just per-measured and very convenient when bottling just a few bottles or in a scenario where you forgot to add the priming sugar when bottling. You can easily just add some sugar to the bottles to achieve the same thing. If you do go the the LHBS looking for carb drops stay away from the muntons carb tabs. They tend to leave floaties in your beer.

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Ah! I see that I forgot to follow up.

Uncapped, added dextrose (2.1g per 12oz / 3.8g per 22oz), then recapped. It was a bit trickier than expected on my little scale than I thought (1000 gram limit, 0.1 gram increments), but was doable in the end. Ended up with 36 12's and 2 22's... think I have some missing bottles stashed away somewhere.

Couldn't get to the LHBS before they closed for the weekend, so I ended up not adding yeast. We'll see in 2-3 weeks if what I did have was still viable.

Thanks for the tip on the Munton's tabs.