Bottle Carbing

My buddy bottled his first beer about two months ago. No signs of carbonation. I'm at a loss as to what to tell him. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for what went wrong, but more importantly, how to salvage the beer.

My advice is to open it all up, keg it and force carb on my system (he is also my roommate) but he was really hoping to give his first brew away to friends. It does taste great.

Anyway, it is only a 1.062 OG beer, nothing crazy. In the primary for about 4 weeks, no cold crashing, no filtering, nothing nuts either. It was bottle conditioned at about 70 degrees until I advised him to move it into a 75 degree climate two weeks ago. Again, no signs of carbonation whatsoever. Another interesting thing, I can see the Mutton carb tabs he used broken into little flakes at the bottom. So the cap seems to be fine, and for whatever reason the yeast are doing nothing.

Should he hold of for another month? I know they *might* still carbonate, but in my mind it looks pretty bad. Is it possible to re-pitch with some dry yeast? Other suggestions?

If it isn't a big beer and it's done 2 months without any carb at all, something is amiss. The last thing I'd do is open them all and dump the bottles into a keg to carb. That's got oxidation written all over it. If you used carb tabs and there is still evidence of those in the bottom of the bottle, then it sounds like the yeast aren't doing their job so your best bet will probably be to go the route of adding a little yeast to the bottles and recapping.

Shake em up!

Ha, I assumed that I would be siphoning carefully from the bottles to the keg, but now that you mention it I'm not sure how that would actually be done without oxygen exposure. In my inert gas chamber with scuba gear, thats how.

We started to shake them weeks ago, unfortunately.

I think we are going to add yeast. A tiny pinch of the S-05 I have in the fridge should do the trick i assume?