Too Little Carbonation

Well, I finally opened my first homebrew (yay!), and it was a bit flat. Maybe I didn't put enough priming sugar... I don't know, my friend was helping me out with that part... LoL

Anyways, my question is if it's too late to add more priming sugar.



Also, are green beers usually a bit cidery? I tried one after about a week of being in bottle (wanted to see what it would taste like), and it tasted cidery. I figured it was just because it was still too young. I tried one last night (almost two weeks in bottle), and it was a lot better, and not so cidery.

Any thoughts?

What temp have the bottles been sitting at? If it's not warm enough, the yeast won't do their thing. Try to keep them around 70 - 72. Also, the amount of alcohol in the brew will have an effect. The bigger it is, the longer it will need to condition.

Cidery is normally a result of adding a bunch of sugar. Was it a kit or a home designed brew? Recipe?

The only thing I would add to what Hopfan said would be to ask what kind of sugar did you use to prime with? Table sugar or corn sugar?

John

How long has it been since you bottled? I have noticed a wide variation in how long it takes my brews to carb. one batch of my SNPA clone was well carbed in one week, whereas my last stout took well over a month. one thing you can do to speed up the process is to gently tilt and swirl the bottles to rouse the yeast. you don't want to shake them to prevent oxidation, but gently rousing the yeast will get it in contact with more of the beer instead of just sitting on the bottom.

Hercules Rockefeller said:

How long one thing you can do to speed up the process is to gently tilt and swirl the bottles to rouse the yeast. you don't want to shake them to prevent oxidation, but gently rousing the yeast will get it in contact with more of the beer instead of just sitting on the bottom.

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It's been almost two weeks.

I'll give that a try, since when I shook the bottles up (after the beer was already out of them), they foamed up like crazy. They taste fairly carbed (like a Diet Pepsi carb), but don't have a head or anything, not that I mind.


Anyways, I used brown sugar for half of the batch, and half normal white sugar for the other half (wanted to do a bit of experimenting). Neither one seems particularly different from the other...

I don't know the specific temps (I don't have a thermo, or a lot of stuff that I need to get), but I know we keep the thermo for the house over 75*... Even though it's under the stairs (there's a little closet down there), it still feels fairly warm in there.

How much sugar did you use?

From the sounds of it, you used table sugars as the bulk of your fermentables. This is fine, but adds that cidery taste to your beer, as you've described. It also doesn't give your beer that full flavored, full bodied mouthfeel that using all malt extract would give you. It's no big deal though. Many people do this with their first batches, as many of the kits tell you to.

Next time you might want to consider getting rid of the sugar altogether and going with 100% malt. If you're going to use sugar, corn sugar (dextrose) won't mess with the flavor of your beer as much as table sugar.

In any case, congrats on your beer!

Brewsmith said:

How much sugar did you use?

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We used a little over a tablespoon and a teaspoon for each liter (we primed each bottle).

Beodude123 said:

We used a little over a tablespoon and a teaspoon for each liter (we primed each bottle).

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The priming sugar shouldn't affect the flavor, even if you did use regular ol' white sugar.

What was the exact recipe of the beer you made?

table sugar or brown sugar will not ferment as easily as corn sugar, which is a smaller sugar molecule than others (if I am not mistaken if I'm wrong any one feel free to chime in), so that is probably why it is taking longer to carb. for your next batch, I'd recomend using 3/4 cup of powdered corn sugar boiled in a couple cups of water and then cooled and added to the bottling bucket, then racking the beer on top of the priming sugar solution (which will mix the beer with the sugar) this has worked well for me.

Well it came in a kit. It was a Coopers Ale... I don't know the exact kind. It came with the dextrose (I think... It was the sugar that made beer taste better) and the extract. I boiled 2 liters of water, and dumped it on the extract and sugar, then cooled it down with 20 or so liters of water. Got to about 70*F after it was finished.