Bottling volume and Carbonation

I bottled an irish red ale a while back and have had it bottled 2 weeks (I know you recommend 3 weeks minimum, but two other sources have said 2 and this isn't quite about that ) and it's carbonation is only slowly increasing and it still has a very thin mouthfeel. I was wondering, if I under-filled the bottles by maybe (at most) 1/4" have I doomed my beer to under-carbonation? They all look pretty close, though slightly under, normal beers as I can recall. Suggestions? Thanks guys and gals!

No. a tiny bit of variance is acceptable. If you said that you only half filled the bottles, then I might say yes, but if they are filled to at least the neck, you are fine. Give em time, they will get there. The only reasons they wouldn't is because the yeast were severly stressed to begin with, or not enough priming sugar, or the temperature is way off, or some other odd ball variable. But whatever you do, 2 weeks is usually not enough for the proper carbonation. Also remember, the higher the OG was, the longer the beer will usually take to naturally carbonate.

Thanks for the input guys. It was definitely a high gravity beer, so I guess it'll be a little longer, and I generally went with the bottling wand displacement method, maybe giving it just a touch more, but careful not to over do it. I don't need to be cleaning up bottle bombs!

I wouldn't expect a NORMAL grav beer to be carbed at only 2 weeks in the bottle, a high gravity beers.

A lot of written information has gone down in flames simply due to the instant feedback that forums like this generate. It's all well and good that some books might say 2 weeks, heck some books say fermentation is complete in a week, let alone bottle carbing, but when you see on here dozens of folks who post after a week or two that there beer still is flat, that you start to see that maybe the info is wrong, and then when you have them come back in a week, or three or 6 with their beer perfectly cared, then you start to see a pattern.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, 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."

Lazy Llama came up with a handy dandy chart to determine how long something takes in brewing, whether it's fermentation, carbonation, bottle conditioning....



If a beer isn't carbed by "x number of weeks" you just have to give them more 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.

Your amount of headspace really had little or no bearing on this issue at all.