Need advice

I brewed a mexican cerveza extract, all went fine and when it came to bottling i used 1 coopers carbonation drop, i usually use 1 1/2 but read that 1would be fine for a 500ml bottle.

I bottled it on the 17th, it's cleared and sediment has gone to the bottom of the bottle so i tried a couple like i usually do after bottling.

It's far too flat!

Is there anyway i can get some more fizz in to these bottles?

Would opening them and adding another carbonisation drop in to each and then recap the bottles before leaving them for a while work?

Thanks for advice.

I've got 40 bottles of flat lager, well flattish.

ianac1 said:

I brewed a mexican cerveza extract, all went fine and when it came to bottling i used 1 coopers carbonation drop, i usually use 1 1/2 but read that 1would be fine for a 500ml bottle.

I bottled it on the 17th, it's cleared and sediment has gone to the bottom of the bottle so i tried a couple like i usually do after bottling.

It's far too flat!

Is there anyway i can get some more fizz in to these bottles?

Would opening them and adding another carbonisation drop in to each and then recap the bottles before leaving them for a while work?

Thanks for advice.

I've got 40 bottles of flat lager, well flattish.

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I'd swirl them up again and keep them someplace warm for another two to three weeks to allow them to carb up. It usually takes about three weeks to carb up nicely, even if you use more sugar/drops. Since it's only been about 4 1/2 days, it's way to soon to worry about it. It should be fine!

Thanks for the quick response Yooper.

I've just done them all.

Opened, added another half drop, recapped them then swirled them up again.

I'll leave them for a few weeks now.

What a job it was trying to get the cap on in the space between adding the 1/2 drop and lager firing out the top of the bottle!

Thanks again.

I've a feeling they'll be better when i open my next one.

ianac1 said:

Thanks for the quick response Yooper.

I've just done them all.

Opened, added another half drop, recapped them then swirled them up again.

I'll leave them for a few weeks now.

What a job it was trying to get the cap on in the space between adding the 1/2 drop and lager firing out the top of the bottle!

Thanks again.

I've a feeling they'll be better when i open my next one.

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Well, you may have gushers when you open the next one. Be careful.

Proper carbonation takes weeks. If you are testing for carbonation after 4 days you are doing it wrong. Popping open your perfectly fine beer to add more sugar is also not good. That beer rushing out of the top of your bottles is actually what little CO2 that had time to be produced escaping.

I made a stout that took almost two months to carb up. I made a pale ale that was carbed in a few days, but had no head retention and no residual bubbles after the pour, and tasted like ****. About a month into the bottling it was the best beer I ever made.

The hardest part about making beer is the patience it takes to produce the best quality beer you can. I have tried to brew weekly in order to get a pipeline going. I have some hefe's in the closet that are exactly 21 days old now and since I have an amber ale and apfelwein on tap I had no reason to mess with them. I still have some of those several month old stouts aging as well which I don't even want to touch for as long as possible. Next time you bottle do whatever you can not to touch them for at least 3 weeks. They will carb up.

*in before Revvy's link to the carb video

So you bottled on the 17th and today it's the 23rd....that's 6 days, right?

Read this.

Revvy's Blog, Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning.

And walk away for at least 2 more weeks....

GO brew another batch, and you can be drinking these when you bottle those....

Yeh i know what you guys are saying, i do try to wait as long as possible but it was in primary for about 2 weeks and then secondary in the bottles for the 6 days so thought one might have been OK.

Tried one from my last batch earlyish.

A pal ale, carbonisation was great, ale was just a little green much like cvstrat says but it didn't taste too bad and did just get better with time.

Doesn't anyone get tempted to try just the one wee sneaky one early on to see what it might be like?

I thought about the gushers too, i'm sure i'll have a few Yooper but rather a few gushers than flat lager.

Anyway i'm not going near them again for a few weeks at least.

ianac1 said:

Yeh i know what you guys are saying, i do try to wait as long as possible but it was in primary for about 2 weeks and then secondary in the bottles for the 6 days so thought one might have been OK.

Tried one from my last batch earlyish.

A pal ale, carbonisation was great, ale was just a little green much like cvstrat says but it didn't taste too bad and did just get better with time.

Doesn't anyone get tempted to try just the one wee sneaky one early on to see what it might be like?

I thought about the gushers too, i'm sure i'll have a few Yooper but rather a few gushers than flat lager.

Anyway i'm not going near them again for a few weeks at least.

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First, time in the fermentors/secondary rreally has no bearing on the time it takes to carb a beer, though some say that it does help reduce the greaness, but I'm not totally in agreement. My experience has been that the yeasties when they are swimming around eating up the sugar to carb the beer, also cleans up more of the young flavors..as does the co2, acting like a scrubber in a sense.

This thread has stories of long term conditioning and it's effect if SAVING what people thought were "BAD" beers.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/

Secondly, yeah, people are tempted to try their beer early, and that's why there are about 12 threads like yours every day.

And that's why I wrote the blog, rather than having to write the same info several times a day...AND why Poindexter made the video, and LLAMA made the drawing.....Becasue daily a bunch of new brewers (who were natually impatient to try their creation) start "panic" threads...

There's nothing wrong with sampling earlier (except of you do it too often, and have ti all gone before it reaches it's peak) it is not realizing that beer has to go through this process, and thinking something is wrong like you did. I mean at least you posted, believe it or not, countless batches have been dumped because of what happened to you.....that's why I wrote the never dump your beer blog, to give people pause before committing beer-acide.

But it is still a fact of brewing...bottle carbing and conditioning is not instantaeneous, it is a natural, living process, that, due to all the variables in the blog I initially linked can take anywhere from a couple weeks til several months for carbonation to develop and our beer to taste as awesome as it possibly can.

Heck my 1.090 Belgian dark strong ale took about 4 months before it fully carbed and lost the hot alchohol taste that came with a high alcohol content beer......And it's so worth it.

more patience required

ianac1 said:

Doesn't anyone get tempted to try just the one wee sneaky one early on to see what it might be like?

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I do. I always try a beer 7 days after bottling, just to see. I tried a week old pale ale yesterday... no head, some bubbles, still tasted a bit sweet, but it tasted good. I won't have another one for another two weeks, but it gives me a good idea of how tasty they'll be when they're ready to go.

ianac1 said:

Doesn't anyone get tempted to try just the one wee sneaky one early on to see what it might be like?

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It depends, usually not anymore because I know it will be much better waiting the proper amount of time, the beer won't go bad or anything, once you've sampled enough beers of different styles in every stage of their process (Fermentation through conditioning) enough times you have a good feeling for what the different style beers will do. If I brew a wildly different beer, I may sample it early because there are some simple beers we brew that will be very drinkable early on and some simple beers that will not. Another factor is: Having enough other brew bottled or kegged and waiting to be able to leave the green beer alone. You need to brew more, faster, you can tell SWMBO I said so.

WilliamstonBrew said:

I do. I always try a beer 7 days after bottling, just to see. I tried a week old pale ale yesterday... no head, some bubbles, still tasted a bit sweet, but it tasted good. I won't have another one for another two weeks, but it gives me a good idea of how tasty they'll be when they're ready to go.

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Yep exactly the same as me, but i could just tell that even if i left this lager alone it wouldn't carb up the way i wanted.

I like a lager to have a bit of fizz.

For anyone using the coopers drops in 500ml bottles i'd definitely recommend 1 1/2 drops per bottle.

The packet says 1 drop per 375ml bottle or 2 per 750ml.

Nothing about 500ml hence the other 1/2 drop per bottle which i should have done at the point of bottling and will from now on.

On the other hand how much cane sugar would you use per 500ml bottle?

COLObrewer said:

It depends, usually not anymore because I know it will be much better waiting the proper amount of time, the beer won't go bad or anything, once you've sampled enough beers of different styles in every stage of their process (Fermentation through conditioning) enough times you have a good feeling for what the different style beers will do. If I brew a wildly different beer, I may sample it early because there are some simple beers we brew that will be very drinkable early on and some simple beers that will not. Another factor is: Having enough other brew bottled or kegged and waiting to be able to leave the green beer alone. You need to brew more, faster, you can tell SWMBO I said so.

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Please don't say that! your teasing me.

I've got another ready to start but nothing to store it in when finished.
Bottles all conditioning, keg full of dark ale.