Carbonation question

I opened my batch of bitter today and after 2.5 weeks it's fully carbonated. This baby is perfect and far superior in carbonation to my other batches. I reported earlier on this forum that giving the bottles a shake to suspend the yeast every 3-4 days and keeping them somewhere warm really improved the carbonation but last night I received a call from my brewing buddy who was trying a bottle of my bitter for the first time. He said the carbonation was brilliant. The problem: he took the bottles of my bitter from the bottling session we did together and neither shook them nor stored them in a warm place. The yeast I used was the 1968 ESB from Wyeast which states it can tolerate alcohol levels up to 9%. Could it be that the higher tolerance for alcohol allowed the yeast to fully utilize the priming sugar (more so than my other batches using dry Irish yeast which has a lower tolerance)? I'm quite sure it was done fermentation and I'm totally sure I didn't overprime. I added the priming solution to the bucket before bottling and I kept a few bottles back and primed them directly with 0.5 tsp sugar and water. No difference between the two.

Wadda ya'll think?

I think there is no need to shake the bottles. The yeast fermented the priming sugar without the aid of agitation. If left alone it will do its job and settle to the bottom of the bottle. I tend to judge the state of carbonation by the sediment in the bottle.

I'm not a big fan of priming individual bottles, its too easy to get uneven carbination.

Not really sure what the prob is here.

Nostrildamus said:

Wadda ya'll think?

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I think I'm not really sure what the question was.

Nostrildamus said:

. The yeast I used was the 1968 ESB from Wyeast which states it can tolerate alcohol levels up to 9%. Could it be that the higher tolerance for alcohol allowed the yeast to fully utilize the priming sugar (more so than my other batches using dry Irish yeast which has a lower tolerance)? .

Wadda ya'll think?

Click to expand...

my best guess is that the yeast with higher alcohol tolerance was able to carbonate faster without going dormant
my 8% scottish ale never carbonated well with the nottingham yeast i made it with.
my barleywine at 10.5% carbonated well with the lavlin ec1118 at bottling