Adding Carb Tabs to my under-carbed beer

I just recently completed my first home brew. It's a nut brown ale that I had in the primary for 2 weeks, the secondary for 1 week, and in the bottle for 3 weeks now.

I messed up when bottling my beer and measured out 3/4 cup of sugar using a kitchen measuring cup instead of putting 2 and 2 together and using the entire 5 oz supply I recieved from midwest supplies. Looking at what was left in the bag it looks like I used only about 2oz of it.

The beer carbed up and tastes great it's just not as carbed as I would like it to be. My question is can I take off the caps and add one of the Cooper's drops to each bottle, recap them, and give them a couple more weeks? Or will this over carb it and mess everything up?

I know everyone on the forum hates when the same questioned gets asked over and over but I couldnt find the answer to this anywhere else on the forum. Any advice will help.

If they're drinkable, I'd just leave it and chalk it up to a lesson learned. To me, it wouldn't be worth the oxidation risk, plus dropping a carb drop into an already carved beer may cause it to foam over. Maybe try it with a six pack and see what happens.

Funny, I ran into a similar issue and was thinking of doing what OP was considering. Id like to hear more people chime in on the topic if possible.

My problem wasnt that I didnt use enough sugar, I didnt mix it in the bottling bucket at all. I just poured it in then while doing 4 things at once forgot to stir so Im pretty sure thats the culprit.

fwiw, i had a similar situation a few years ago, and did it to a six pack only, and didn't really notice much of a difference. i'd just let it go, but no real harm at least in my opinion in trying it to a few of them just for the hell of it.

I had a similar situation, but my undercarbing was due to bad cap seals leaking the pressure out. I started out thinking I would just uncap, and a carb tab or 2 and recap. There is not enough time to crimp a cap back on after dropping the carb tab in. I ended up with a foamy mess. Doing it once wasn't enough for me either. I made several messes before giving up. I ended up putting them in the fridge for a few days. I opened one and decided to try the tabs again. It worked much better doing it this way, so I did a few more. In the end, I don't think it was worth the time and aggravation to do it. I had 3 batches with bad caps and I am still suffering through them, but not worth it to me to fix.

3/4's is pretty close to the 5 ounces anyway. I wouldn't add anymore sugar or do anything else with it for at least 2 more weeks.

If you add carb tabs you will more than likely get bottle bombs or at least gushers....Just give it some more time.

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.

Yeah I agree with Revvy. Have they been in room temperature? If not, bring them out to room temperature for a week and they should carb up more.

I just did it with my kegged beer - it was way undercarbed - almost as if it comes out of fermenter on some day 10ish (problems with seal in keg - most of CO2 just escaped), so I was fed up with it being on the flat side and just bottled it with carb drops into PET bottles. On the bright side, it was at cellar temp for some 5 days now and was perfectly clear even after moving around.

I know it sounds risky, but... will let you know in some 14 days how it turned out. I think, if I get it overcarbed, I can always release bit of CO2.

What I am aware of is that I have probably increased chance of it getting contaminated and oxidized, so it must dry out pretty soon and definitely wont be for long storage.

Thanks for all of the advice. They have been at room temperature for about 3 weeks but as much as it will kill me to do so I will put them in my bedroom closet and forget about them for a little while.

I have added carb tabs to bottles before and haven't gotten any bottle bombs. I would try it will just one-two tabs (depending on the size of your bottles) and put them at room temp. I think people put too many tabs in to get those bottle bombs (and ones that don't bottle properly).

Let me know how it turns out.