carbonation in Belgian bottles

Hey everyone. When using the Belgian corks instead of caps does it take longer to carbonate or something? Last time I did this bottling method I had to really yank out the corks and the beer was a little flat. It was a tripel and I used about 5oz of priming sugar. Is that normal for homebrew or should it just pop out easily like I'm used to buying in store?

I can't say from personal experience, because I've not used corks. But I believe Belgians are usually carbonated to a higher number of volumes than many other styles. The amount of sugar you want to use depends on the volume you're bottling and the amount of CO2 already in solution, but for 5 gallons of beer at 65F, NB's priming sugar calculator tells me that you would want something more like 6.5 oz of corn sugar in order to get 3.3 vols of CO2 in your beer. If the temp was closer to 75F you'd want to use closer to 7 oz. Figure out what volume of carbonation you want, then use a calculator to figure out how much sugar you'll need to achieve it.

Cheers