Lager still flat after 5 weeks

I made a lager this winter, babysitting it while it lagered in my DIY lagerator. It came out bone dry and completely clear and was really good. I ended up with about 4 to 4.5 gallons, so I added about 4oz of corn sugar when I bottled. I also stirred the yeast cake gently at the bottom, not enough I guess, to make sure there was yeast in the bottles. After 5 weeks it is still completely flat and slightly sweet from the corn sugar.

I figure I have a few options now:

1. Toss it. Not really.
2. Make a yeast starter and inoculate each bottle with some yeast, being careful with sanitation.
3. Buy a kegging setup and force carbonate it, but also add yeast to eat the residual corn sugar. Maybe it would still naturally carbonate and wouldn't need to be forced.

Obviously answer 2 would be the cheapest that still yields beer. Is that a viable solution? Or should I bite the bullet and buy the kegging setup that I've hesitated to buy as I don't know where to put it? (Money isn't really an issue either, it doesn't cost THAT much.)

Any other options out there?

You can buy one or two dry yeast packets and put a few granules in each bottle... Makes it tough being a lager though. I say either you can do that with a dry lager yeast or go with your plan to make a small starter and drop some of that into each bottle.

When this happened to me, I purged a cleaned and sanitized corny with CO2 and dumped all the bottles in there with a little yeast I had from another fermentation. It conditioned itself in the keg. I periodically let off gas until it was nearly flat then slowly transferred it into another keg to leave the mini yeast cake in the other keg.

You've got a few options I guess... None of them are fast and easy. Good luck dude.

1. Shouldn't even be on the list!
2. I like this option... or instead of a liquid yeast and starter, use some fresher dry yeast. Doesn't really matter what strain as it wouldn't add any perceptible flavor anyways.
3. Great, but like you indicated, you still have a corn sugar problem. IF you really want to keg, save it for next batch. You can get this batch carbonated yet.

ADD: 4. Top crop an actively krausening beer...carefully add some to each bottle.

BigB said:

ADD: 4. Top crop an actively krausening beer...carefully add some to each bottle.

Click to expand...

I hadn't thought about that. I have an all-grain Ruination clone in the primary right now. I could harvest some yeast from that. The krausen already fell so can I just take a qty from the bottom and put it in each bottle?

I'd try two things in this case. The first is to still wait a bit, turning the bottles end-over-end and maybe putting a few of them in the warmest place you have (on top of the fridge? next to the hot water heater?) and trying them again in two weeks.

The second is to simply uncap each bottle and add the tiniest pinch of yeast to each bottle and recap. By a tiny pinch, I mean like 1 little "grain" of dry yeast. That is plenty. You should use about 1/3 package of less of an 11 gram package. Dry ale yeast is fine- I've used nottingham for this, but S04 would be another good choice.

I had one other beer that came out flat after 4 weeks. I just stuck it in the basement really disappointed.

About 3 months later I gave one a try and it had turned into one of the best beers I ever made. The carbonation just took some time. We would only drink it on special occasions, like Mondays and Tuesdays, and maybe the other 5 days of the week.

So here we are, 10 days later, and I went to add some yeast. The first bottle had a little pfffft when I opened it, but I put a few specks of yeast in and re-capped it. The next one had a definite PFFFFFFFt to it, and I could see bubbles form on the side of the bottle. I had no choice but to pour it out into a glass and sample it. Yummy. This is really my first all-grain brew, and a lager, and I was really looking forward to drinking this.

I stuck it into the freezer so I could drink the other half cold and it is really good, just like I wanted. Pale gold color, clear, crisp tasting, but a lot more body than a Bud. Wow, I just took another sip and this is REEALLY GOOOD.

So what I've decided to do is to allow the beer to continue carbonating as is. I'll put the yeast away just in case, although I wouldn't trust an open pack. I was careful in handling.

Patience...