RIS-12% not carbing after 90 days

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Camping57

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I brewed up a pretty hefty RIS last November. OG was 1.124 and FG ended up at 1.034, so I am right around 12% ABV. I used Wyeast 1728 and racked to secondary after one month. I left it in the secondary for 4 months before bottling. I added about 4 oz. of priming sugar and bottled it up.
Now after almost 90 days I have just a tiny amount of carbonation. I even shock up all the bottles and put them up in the garage to get a warmer temperature.
I am thinking that I have a combination of yeast that was right on the edge of it's alcohol tolerance and I also left it to settle out so long that I had very little yeast left in suspension.
I am thinking about taking some champagne yeast added to a small amount of very weak wort and then prime each bottle with a little bit of this solution (soaking the bottles in Star San, opening, priming and capping with sanitized caps). I am thinking that this will give me a little bit of fresh yeast with more alcohol tolerance to give the already added priming sugar some activity.
My only worry about this is if the new yeast will kick off too much fermentation (= bottle bombs).
Any thoughts about this or other possible solutions are appreciated.

By the way; I also oaked this with toasted spirals and added 18oz. of Makers Mark and even uncarbed it is starting to taste great.
 
What is the alcohol tolerance of the yeast? I'm not familiar with high grav yeasts but that would be my first question.
 
What is the alcohol tolerance of the yeast? I'm not familiar with high grav yeasts but that would be my first question.

Was just going to post this as well.

If the ABV is above the tolerance of the yeast it will not carbonate as the yeast will remain dormant due to hostile environment.
 
Description from Wyeast

Flocculation: high
Attenuation: 69-73%
Temperature Range: 55-75° F (13-24° C)
Alcohol Tolerance: approximately 12% ABV

So there is a possibility the approx. ABV tolerance of the yeast could be a bit lower than the ABV you have since these are only educated guesstimates at best and not absolutes.
 
Carbonation tablets? I have the same problem with a hopslam clone. I gave up and am drink a flat dipa with now nearly no aroma... That'll teach me lol.
 
No, I didn't repitch. I knew that I was working on the upper edge for that yeast as far as alcohol tolerance which is what made me initially think of adding some additional yeast that has a higher tolerance. I was thinking that if I made up almost a slurry from some dry champagne yeast and then added a set # of drops per bottle (3 drops maybe), that would give me enough viable yeast to get it to carb up.
 
Honestly with an RIS it wouldn't be out of style to serve it as "cask conditioned" at all. I personally prefer stouts this way, but it also isn't everyones cup of tea to have it that way.
 
Camping57 said:
No, I didn't repitch. I knew that I was working on the upper edge for that yeast as far as alcohol tolerance which is what made me initially think of adding some additional yeast that has a higher tolerance. I was thinking that if I made up almost a slurry from some dry champagne yeast and then added a set # of drops per bottle (3 drops maybe), that would give me enough viable yeast to get it to carb up.

I would say more that it was a function of time than alcohol content. While 12% most certainly would have stressed the yeast, it was probably the 6 months of aging that really made the difference.

How are the bottles sealed?
 
Nightshade said:
Honestly with an RIS it wouldn't be out of style to serve it as "cask conditioned" at all. I personally prefer stouts this way, but it also isn't everyones cup of tea to have it that way.

That is a great idea.

That would probably be my choice rather than opening every bottle to add yeast. Cool one down and see how it tastes. You might like it!
 
Give it more time before you make any changes. Bottling without adding more yeast, that close to the tolerance of the yeast will make carbonation take longer. Adding fresh yeast, to something with that high of an ABV (already) can be tricky. You can shock the yeast that you add, making it take longer to carbonate. You can also have bottle bombs due to wine yeast eating sugars that the beer yeast won't.

Wyeast 1728 can go beyond 12%. Since you have SOME carbonation already, just give it more TIME. Six months (or more) is NOT uncommon in bigger brews.

BTW, for the next batch, consider carbonating on CO2 (in keg). It really is the only way to get carbonation closer to your time frame.
 
Ok, I'll give it some more time (another 2-3 months). I like my stouts to have a light carbonation, but I guess if worse comes to worse I can just chill these and drink them as is.
 
Im thinking its the 18oz of bourbon. That's the trade off you make when adding and whiskey to a beer. Couldn't hurt to add yeast/sugar, but with that much bourbon, I'm not at all surprised that its not carbing, and I'm not sure that the yeast/sugar will do much.
 
Good luck. I just poured a little more than a case worth of 13% stout into a keg to force carb and rebottle. I brewed it two years ago almost. It sat in bottles for a year and it never developed carb. So i sanitized, purged and ran constant CO2 into the keg and dumped the bottles into a CO2 blanket. Its sitting at room temp at 20psi now.
 
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