I can't believe I didn't prime...

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mdawson9

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So I made a dogfish head 60 minute clone for my 4th brew. Continuously hopped, dry hopped, temp controlled, cold crashed. Just went the whole nine on this one. Today was bottling day. The beer smelled and tasted great. Just finished cleaning everything up and to my horror realized I never put sugar in the bottling bucket. I bottled all this beautiful beer and didn't prime it!!! Devastated. Any ideas? Pop the caps, put back into the bottling bucket and redo? Possible? That's really my only option right?
Thanks for any help.
 
You could pop the tops and bottle prime. Gotta be safer than transfering back to the bucket.
 
I did that last time. I put a tsp of table sugar in each bottle. I think it was a bit much. Try 1/2 tsp.
 
buy the drops, or dump back in bucket... cant see how that would not be safe... its beer now... just sanitize and go to work
 
I think I'd lean to the Carb drops too, for the ease, trying to add 1/2 tsp sugar to a bottle seems messy. I wouldn't put back in bucket, oxidation issues. Uncap, add sugar or tablet , then recap (new caps). Good luck, easy mistake, you can save it;)
 
Or you could just let it sit for a while and it will carbonate naturally on its own.
 
gmcastil said:
Or you could just let it sit for a while and it will carbonate naturally on its own.
Click to expand...

If the yeast did their job and ate up all the fermentables the beer won't carbonate with out additional priming sugar.

My vote is carb drops. The bottles are sealed and there is alcohol in there so infection risk is minimal. Either method would be an oxidation risk but leaving in the bottles probably the lesser of the two.

Just my 2 cents.
 
Thanks for all the help!!! Drops do sound like the way to go. One other thing...I just bought corny keg and co2 tank from a guy off Craigslist. Need to clean it and figure out if the co2 has any thing in it. Would that be better if I quickly got ready to keg? Just carefully empty the bottles into the keg?
 
I can't see any useful way to get the beer out of the bottle and into a keg without both oxidizing it and exposing it to airborne bacteria.
 
So the coopers drops came yesterday and I put them in each bottle today. One for each 12 oz and two for each 22 oz. is it normal that when I cracked the uncarbed beer it still had vapor come out and when I put the drop in each bottle, I had foam spill over each time? I waited until the foam stopped and then recapped. All sounds good and normal?
 
mdawson9 said:
So the coopers drops came yesterday and I put them in each bottle today. One for each 12 oz and two for each 22 oz. is it normal that when I cracked the uncarbed beer it still had vapor come out and when I put the drop in each bottle, I had foam spill over each time? I waited until the foam stopped and then recapped. All sounds good and normal?
Click to expand...

sounds like your batch was not done fermenting...did you try and taste and see if they were carbed already? overflowing foam is usually an indication of carbonation and as u said you had that co2 vapor escape when you opened the bottles. are you using a hydrometer?
 
I used a hydrometer two days in a row and the gravity was 1.024. Which I thought was high but since it was the same reading two days in a row and it was at the three week point, I thought it was done. The bottles were sitting one week before I put the drops in today. So if it wasn't done fermenting, am I going to have over carbonation here since I put the drops in any way? So pissed at this whole thing. The beer smells and tastes great.
 
mdawson9 said:
I used a hydrometer two days in a row and the gravity was 1.024. Which I thought was high but since it was the same reading two days in a row and it was at the three week point, I thought it was done. The bottles were sitting one week before I put the drops in today. So if it wasn't done fermenting, am I going to have over carbonation here since I put the drops in any way? So pissed at this whole thing. The beer smells and tastes great.
Click to expand...

Honestly, 1.024 seems WAY too high for this type of brew. Hard to say without knowing your recipe, but I wouldn't expect a 60-min ipa clone to finish this high. I'd be expecting something in the 1.012-1.014 range. Methinks you bottled too soon.
 
mdawson9 said:
I see. Any ideas on what to do now??
Thanks.
Click to expand...

What was your recipe/process? What was your OG? Which yeast did you use? Also, have you calibrated your hydrometer in water and have you corrected gravity readings for temperature?
 
OK. I have an update. On 7/14 I put the drops in each bottle. Now 3 weeks have passed. I threw a beer in the fridge yesterday and just popped it open. No vapor trail and it's completely flat! It tastes amazing but not a hint of carbonation. I'm so confused...I was worried about over carbonation b/c when I added the drops, vapor came out and the beer foamed up when I dropped them in the bottle. I quickly recapped and they have been at room temp for 3 weeks. Am I impatient or is something wrong here? It is a higher gravity beer (1.072) but I would think there would be some sign of carbing. Thanks for any input!
 
mdawson9 said:
OK. I have an update. On 7/14 I put the drops in each bottle. Now 3 weeks have passed. I threw a beer in the fridge yesterday and just popped it open. No vapor trail and it's completely flat! It tastes amazing but not a hint of carbonation. I'm so confused...I was worried about over carbonation b/c when I added the drops, vapor came out and the beer foamed up when I dropped them in the bottle. I quickly recapped and they have been at room temp for 3 weeks. Am I impatient or is something wrong here? It is a higher gravity beer (1.072) but I would think there would be some sign of carbing. Thanks for any input!
Click to expand...

I have used coopers drops, they call for 2 per 750 ml bottle
 
gmcastil said:
Or you could just let it sit for a while and it will carbonate naturally on its own.
Click to expand...

I've had good luck with this. I had a dozen bottles capped, realized I needed to add priming sugar, added it and just kept going. The beer was a dark wheat I believe.

Those un-primed bottles were fine, lower but decent carbonation with less head retention.

I also poured a different batch back into a fermentor, let it finish, and added the correct amount of priming sugar - no spoiled bottles.
 
mdawson9 said:
So the coopers drops came yesterday and I put them in each bottle today. One for each 12 oz and two for each 22 oz. is it normal that when I cracked the uncarbed beer it still had vapor come out and when I put the drop in each bottle, I had foam spill over each time? I waited until the foam stopped and then recapped. All sounds good and normal?
Click to expand...

This, yes this....

Have you finished drinking the batch yet?
 
After a few weeks still flat, I open the bottles and kegged all but 12 bottles. At this point I figured there was nothing to lose. That was yesterday. I tried a bottle today and it was still flat so I'm praying the beer wasnt oxidized in the transfer and I can force carb it. Fingers crossed!
 
Another noob the edge of my seat, here (just joined yesterday). How did the kegging go after the bottles didn't carb?
 
yikes, i got two batches of beer bottled in a similar situation, they are not carbing and i used priming sugar, lol. I thought about dumping them into a keg but decided not to cause of oxidation. how did it go? 4 months and i am still waiting on them to carb, lol!
 
MZRIS said:
yikes, i got two batches of beer bottled in a similar situation, they are not carbing and i used priming sugar, lol. I thought about dumping them into a keg but decided not to cause of oxidation. how did it go? 4 months and i am still waiting on them to carb, lol!
Click to expand...

You may want to try and swirl the bottles around to suspend the yeast again and make sure there somewhere a little bit warmer, but out of the sun.
 
It was a success. I'm enjoying this beautifully carbed IPA for a couple weeks now. I was pretty careful when pouring into the keg. Got down on the floor and had the keg almost sideways, put my arm in with the beer and gently poured. Tastes great! Only problem is that I held back 12 bottles in just in case. Now I wished I had kegged them. Opened another a couple minutes ago and it's still flat. I'll probably keg these now 11 bottles once I kick the keg.
 

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