Hello everyone at HBT. I've been lurking for a couple months now, absorbing all sorts of wisdom from the sages on this forum
Here's my issue. I brewed a porter, a kit from my LHBS. Boiled fine (maybe a bit low volume), aerated fine, pitched fine, very strong fermentation @ ~72F, primary for 1 week, racked okish (had to restart siphon 4 or 5 times lol), 2 weeks in secondary, looked great, FG was good (don't have the numbers in front of me), tasted what I can only guess is "green" because the word I used was "weird." Bottling went good but i'm going to tweak the process for the next time: soaked all bottles in bleach water for 20 min, then rinsed w/hot water using bottle washer, put in dishwasher to dry overnight, ran heat dry cycle. Ran it twice b/c there was still a little wator vapor in most of the bottles in the morning. 3/4 cup dextrose into 2 cups water, boiled, cooled, racked onto that from secondary. Everything else went smoothly, using the bucket-over-dishwasher-with-bottling-wand-on-spigot method that I've seen detailed and praised here (bought new bottling wand tho, the one I had leaked like an S.O.B.). Had caps in diluted bleach-water solution, shook them off one at a time for capping. Caps looked weird after I put them on, didn't think anything of it at the time. Bottled all 22oz + 2x12oz (to test carbonation, but recently read that the 22oz will carbonate more quickly?). Let them sit in the dark at room temp (70-74 F) for 2 weeks, put one 12oz in the fridge for a day to chill.
Popped the cap, barely audible pffff (def. not pfft), almost no carbonation, sour flavor. Obviously disappointed, but didn't resort to rash measures (i.e. dumping entire batch). Examined every bottle, found 3 with a light ring around the waterline in the neck, but after reading a thread mentioning that the krausening of the yeast during carbonation can produce this, I am thinking it was probably that.
Last night I was fiddling around with something and I noticed that there was actually a bottle cap stuck in my capper! (D'oh!) Took a hammer, nail, and plyers to get it out. Tested it on one already-capped bottle, had a good 1/4 length of throw left on the arms.
To me, this means that none of my bottles got properly capped, thus my carbonation issues. Every bottle has a layer of sediment, which to me means that the little yeasties upheld their end of the bargain.
So my question: Do I put 1/4 tsp dextrose in each bottle and recap? Or do I put 3-4 grains of dry yeast in each bottle and recap? I'm still undecided on the sour flavor, since I've read inconclusive posts to either side stating it's undermatured or infected, but I'd love to give this beer a chance to work through it.
Thanks guys!
Here's my issue. I brewed a porter, a kit from my LHBS. Boiled fine (maybe a bit low volume), aerated fine, pitched fine, very strong fermentation @ ~72F, primary for 1 week, racked okish (had to restart siphon 4 or 5 times lol), 2 weeks in secondary, looked great, FG was good (don't have the numbers in front of me), tasted what I can only guess is "green" because the word I used was "weird." Bottling went good but i'm going to tweak the process for the next time: soaked all bottles in bleach water for 20 min, then rinsed w/hot water using bottle washer, put in dishwasher to dry overnight, ran heat dry cycle. Ran it twice b/c there was still a little wator vapor in most of the bottles in the morning. 3/4 cup dextrose into 2 cups water, boiled, cooled, racked onto that from secondary. Everything else went smoothly, using the bucket-over-dishwasher-with-bottling-wand-on-spigot method that I've seen detailed and praised here (bought new bottling wand tho, the one I had leaked like an S.O.B.). Had caps in diluted bleach-water solution, shook them off one at a time for capping. Caps looked weird after I put them on, didn't think anything of it at the time. Bottled all 22oz + 2x12oz (to test carbonation, but recently read that the 22oz will carbonate more quickly?). Let them sit in the dark at room temp (70-74 F) for 2 weeks, put one 12oz in the fridge for a day to chill.
Popped the cap, barely audible pffff (def. not pfft), almost no carbonation, sour flavor. Obviously disappointed, but didn't resort to rash measures (i.e. dumping entire batch). Examined every bottle, found 3 with a light ring around the waterline in the neck, but after reading a thread mentioning that the krausening of the yeast during carbonation can produce this, I am thinking it was probably that.
Last night I was fiddling around with something and I noticed that there was actually a bottle cap stuck in my capper! (D'oh!) Took a hammer, nail, and plyers to get it out. Tested it on one already-capped bottle, had a good 1/4 length of throw left on the arms.
To me, this means that none of my bottles got properly capped, thus my carbonation issues. Every bottle has a layer of sediment, which to me means that the little yeasties upheld their end of the bargain.
So my question: Do I put 1/4 tsp dextrose in each bottle and recap? Or do I put 3-4 grains of dry yeast in each bottle and recap? I'm still undecided on the sour flavor, since I've read inconclusive posts to either side stating it's undermatured or infected, but I'd love to give this beer a chance to work through it.
Thanks guys!