Chile Pale Ale not carbonated.

dfc said:

When I brewed my chile pale ale and added the chiles I first seared them in a pan with a little olive oil. Then I soaked them in Vodka in the freezer for 24 hours. Some of the oil transferred to secondary though and eventually to my bottles. I opened one last Sunday after it had been bottle conditioning a little over 2 weeks and it was carbonated, although barely. It's the only one I've opened, but I know I mixed the proper amount of sugar into my bottling bucket.

Could the olive oil be affecting my carbonation?

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Revvy said:

I don't think so.....If it's barely carbonated, then it's simply not ready yet...there's nothing wrong...it's just not ready yet.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.

Temp and gravity are the two factors that contribute to the time it takes to carb beer. But if a beer's not ready yet, or seems low carbed, and you added the right amount of sugar to it, then it's not stalled, it's just not time yet.

Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."

If a beer isn't carbed by "x number of weeks" you just have to give them ore time. If you added your sugar, then the beer will carb up eventually, it's really a foolroof process. All beers will carb up eventually. A lot of new brewers think they have to "troubleshoot" a bottling issue, when there really is none, the beer knows how to carb itself. In fact if you run beersmiths carbing calculator, some lower grav beers don't even require additional sugar to reach their minimum level of carbonation. Just time.

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RCCOLA said:

Did you stir the beer after adding the priming mix? If you don't, sometimes you will get some under and some over carbed botles.

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RedBeard1 said:

So I made an extract beer from misc ingredients i had laying around leftover from precious batches with the intention of adding some New Mexico green chiles to secondary. Recipe here. After fermentation, it was so good, I decided to bottle half and add chiles to the other half. After two days, I tasted the chile beer, and it is ready to get off the chiles! My question is the same as the OP. How do I achieve good carbonation? I ask, despite Revvy's advice, because I was inspired to add chiles to the secondary by Eske's Green Chile Beer, brewed in Taos, NM. When I spoke with the brewer a year or two ago, he told me that he had trouble with carbonation, and that it was only a problem with the Chile Beer. Something about the chiles seem to cause the CO2 to have a difficult time dissolving in the beer. It's getting bottled tonight, with corn sugar appropriate for about 2.4 volumes. Just wondering if anyone had feedback from chile beer experience.

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dfc said:

Update?

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