re-ocurring problem I can't solve

Well, as posted in the general beer discussion forum, I opened the America $&#* Yeah! today. Two of them were pretty good. But this is not about the flavor. Two of them just were flat as hamburgers. Same thing happened with my pumpkin beer. HB Bill says it might be the fact that I don't mix things around much when I throw in the priming sugar, but I would think that some of them would be over-concentrated with sugar and blow up. I just don't get it. And I want to make sure this problem goes away before I bottle any more of my beers.

Edit: Actually, I remember now that we did mix things around pretty well when bottling this one, because of what HB Bill said about my Pumpkinstein.

Mine get like that too. When I made a Wit a few months ago, some were volcanos and some were flatter than 10 year olds. Why, even now the last couple of bottles of Kolsch in my fridge are pretty duddish. I dumped two already and the one I'm drinking now is nothing to brag about.

Yeah, but none of them were volcanoes. The ones that carbonated were carbonated exactly right. Same thing with the Pumpkinstein. It leads me to think it's a problem with our sanitation, or the seals on the bottles, or something that could vary from bottle to bottle. The next beer to bottle is probably the Oatmeal Java, and I really think it will be great. It would be a shame to lose it because I can't bottle correctly.

rewster451 said:

Yeah, but none of them were volcanoes. The ones that carbonated were carbonated exactly right. Same thing with the Pumpkinstein. It leads me to think it's a problem with our sanitation, or the seals on the bottles, or something that could vary from bottle to bottle. The next beer to bottle is probably the Oatmeal Java, and I really think it will be great. It would be a shame to lose it because I can't bottle correctly.

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My latest strategy is to use 1.5 cups of dme ad make sure its nicely mixed. Not too vigorously, but just enough to make sure the DME blends. This has been working for me lately.

You guys are cooking your priming sugar in a some water before adding it to your batch aren't you?

Of course.

I just want to bring this thread back to the top of the page. Yes I boil my sugar in water. Yes I stirred it before bottling. Last time this happened I didn't rinse my bottles after sanitizing, this time I did. The yeast has to be in good condition, otherwise none of them would have carbonated. The ones that did carbonate did so perfectly. There was not a cidery taste. I am befuddled. Someone has to know what went wrong here.

There's only 3 possibilities, take your pick:

1. Dead yeast..... not likely because some carbonated. Ruled out.
2. Priming sugar not evenly distributed....... You claim no. Ruled out.
3. Caps not sealing well enough to hold pressure to carbonate.......BINGO! Unless you left some sanatizer in some of the bottles you filled, thus killing the yeast or you pasteurized some of the bottles with too high a heat, that's your answer.

Everything ScottT said.

One thing some people do is their bottles are sanitised and rinsed properly, but their bottle caps are not rinsed enough and sanitizer is on the caps. This can vary from little carbonation to fairly OK carbonation.

Another thing is that boiling caps can ruin seals, particularly caps on the bottom of the pot.

How do you guys sanitise your caps?

There's not too many things worse than flat beer

I read all the comments.

Question: Where are you storing your beers prior to fridgeration? Are they in cardboard boxes, the ones they come in like longnecks? Could be your temp is not even. I store mine in milk crates which is more open to the ambient temp.

As for sanitizing and sealing your caps, I don't boil mine. I boil the water then I remove the pot from the heat and place the caps in the water f9r a couple of mins. I remove them using tongs. I also give mine a spin after I place them on the bottle. Through "feel" I can tell if it's going to seal alright.

You don't want to boil your caps. I found the heat loosens the glue that holds the seal to the metal.

I've tried using sanitizer also, but heve not come to any conclusion on it.

If you think you may have a seal problem then just lay your bottles on their sides overnight and see if any are leaking in the morning.

I'll just throw this out there, cause it just happened to me- It might be the bottles. Have you used them all before? I cracked one of my beers open last night, and it was flat. I boiled the primer, I added it to the bucket before the siphon, and let the syphon mix evenly, I inspected all my caps when I bottled. I also spot check some bottles by grabbing one during the capping, and trying to twist the cap. Must've missed this one. Turns out the the mouth of the bottle was a little deformed, and prevented the cap from sealing properly. I had never used this bottle before.

Also, I have noticed on some bottles that no matter how much pressure you put on the capper, it will not seal tightly. I have moved these ones to the side. I will try another batch of caps, and if no luck, then they are getting recycled.

rewster, don't you use plastic bottles? I wonder if that's the problem.

agree w/ HB 99 and Scott. uneven storage temps, uneven mixing of priming solution when transfering, or caps not sealing well. some import bottles don't recap well....

homebrewer_99 said:

There's not too many things worse than flat beer

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I just make do. I've decided that when I get uncarbonated bottles from now on, I'm just going to talk in a british accent and throw darts all over!

No offense to those of you on the other side of the pond, of course.......I just don't know how you can drink that flat beer!

REAL ale is flat, warm and it's best if you don't ask for the recipe.

90% chance it's a seal problem.

david_42 said:

REAL ale is flat, warm and it's best if you don't ask for the recipe.

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I always just assumed the brits were to impatient to wait for their beer to carbonate.

Of course many a year ago there weren't electric fridges and glass bottles and how much pressure can a wood cask take?

I don't know about you guys but I sanitise my caps with 80 proof vodka ( cheap stuff isn't that expensive), I get a shallow dish and pour in enough vodka to cover and just grab one as needed . I have never had a problem with killing yeast either, I have had some that took longer than I thought they should to carbonate but, so far I have had good luck with this method. You may want to try this.

I guess it's probably the seal. The temp thing isn't it, because some are in boxes, some are in six packs, and some are just sitting out on their own. There appears to be no pattern there as to which ones will be flat.

I could also be the sanitizer on the caps, but I don't see how there could be enough on there to ruin anything. I take them out of the sanitizer (I don't boil them), and shake them a bit to get the big droplets out of it, and then toss it on.

I don't use plastic bottles. Who would do that? That's weird.

But, I've noticed that the bottles we bought with beer in them seem to be more often carbonated than the generic longnecks we bought empty. Maybe that's it. I'll have to start really paying attention to that and see if it's 100% correlative.

Thanks for all the help.

rewster451 said:

I don't use plastic bottles. Who would do that? That's weird.

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Dude, I could have sworn I saw a picture of some of your twisted rooster that was bottled in those plastic bottles you see at some homebrew shops. Your dishwasher had kind of melted the necks. Am I going crazy or drunk?

I know which one I hope it is!

I've never done a twisted rewster. That must have been someone else. Coincidence about the name though.

I always rinse the sanitser off the caps. I use chlorine bleach.

But I'm thinking its your seals. You say it's mostly with the new bottles? What kind of capper do you have? Some cappers cap tighter than others or at least can handle a more varied size of lip. I use a cast iron bench capper than caps so damn tight even my twist off bottles seal perfect. In fact I usually use a "beverage tool" to twist them off.

david_42 said:

REAL ale is flat, warm and it's best if you don't ask for the recipe. 90% chance it's a seal problem.

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I kind of agree/disagree with you in that my definition of flat. I consider something to go flat. If it starts out flat (still - uncarbonated) then it can't go flat. But that's just the way I think.

Rewster: When you set your bottles up for conditioning where do you do this? On the floor? On a shelf? What's the temp of the room? If your room is cooler then try placing those suspected bottles high on a shelf.

I've mentioned it before that I have lots of plastic milk crates for some of my bottles. I line the bottom of the crates with several (3-4) layers of cardboard which insulates the bottles from the plastic and the heat/cold transfer between them.

I'm wondering to, about your capper. I had one that I thought was a good one till one night I was trying to cap up some bottles and it just wouldn't work anymore so i had to make a mad dash to a "closed" HBS to pick up an new one. that cured the problem. I hope you find your problem soon this doesn't seem that difficult.
Of course not long after this incident above I went to kegging my beer.
Now I only bottle enough for give aways if needed.

Could be the capper. It's plastic with plastic hinges. Only the "bolts" inside the hinges are metal. It came with our first brewing kit, along with two plastic buckets and a siphon (not auto-siphon). We've since upgraded every other part of our system, and I guess it couldn't hurt to try upgrading that as well.

Edit: And come to think of it, some imports it has a lot of trouble capping. It'll go after fighting with it like a dog, but it's hard. These seals have been good so far. Maybe the generic empty bottles we bought have smaller rings or something?

I think I'm going to cover every part of this. I'll rinse my caps, only use bottles I know seal because they came full of beer, and buy a new capper. Thanks again guys.

Get a bench capper, they'll cap anything and are more reliable than that plastic thing you have now! One day it will break after half filling your batch of beer and you'll have to panic, wondering where you can get a capper after hours on a holiday.

They look like the one on the right. I would go for one that is all steel.

That one on the right is only $30.00US. I don't know if it's all steel though. Mine is cast iron. And I have a steel one some where.

I have the red capper (second on the left). It's over 12 years old. I've not had any problems with it.

The red one, second from the left, is the one I have.

My experience has been that if the beer doesn't leak out of the bottle when you turn it on its side then the bottle is sealed sufficiently well. Do make sure the caps are on tight (beer doesn't leak out, cap doesn't easily pop off, and cap does not spin on the bottle). The bench cappers don't have the issue with the smaller necked bottles but as someone here wisely pointed out to me not so long ago, if you make sure to press the butterfly capper together over the neck then it won't slip up over the neck of the bottle and you can get the cap to crimp down on the neck. FYI, I also have and use the red butterfly capper, second from the left.

As for this buisness of sanitizer, I don't think bleach would have an effect on the yeast unless you had a highly concentrated solution.. but if that was the case then the beer would certainly have a medicinal "bad" taste and I don't see any mention of that. [rant] I also simply don't understand how so many of you have nice equipment but still don't buy sanitizer.. after I tried the bleach solution once I was ready for some no rinse sanitizer - I think that's a more worthwhile upgrade than a secondary OR a wort chiller. Just soak the caps and bottles in some starsan (my choice) or idophor both of which are no rinse and both of which have no effect on the taste of the beer and do not harm yeast. [/rant]

I've had the problem with mixed carbonation and found that I was simply not mixing the priming solution well. You may think you've mixed it well but I'd suggest that for your next batch you use a bit more than 3/4 cup sugar (maybe 5/6) and make darn sure your stir it well (but not vigoriously) and *restir* occasionally as well. I've since had zero problems with carbonation..

The other realistic possiblity would be a temperature problem - the temp needs to stay above 70F and needs to be consistent - I hope your not storing the bottles in the garage or outdoors, keep them inside behind the couch, under the bed, or in the closet. If some of your brews are carbonating and others are not then I do doubt it's a temp thing anyhow. Good luck getting it straightened out, I know it does suck to do all that work for flat beer. When you open the bottles do you hear any hiss at all? Are they absolutely flat or just undercarbonated? Do they become more carbonated with time or flatter with time?

If the beer never does carbonate then you could open them up and drop in some prime tabs and reseal them and wait two weeks - if the yeast is alive and the temp is right then the beer will certainly carbonate if the caps are on tight.