Bottle Conditioning Issue

[JaymzMF]

Hi all. Hope you might be able to give advise or help. I've had a Rye IPA bottle conditioning for 37 days now. It has partial carbonation. Very partial. Pop the cap and you hear a faint hiss. Barely any bubble to speak. Basically, flat still. It's been the same level of carbonation since week 2-3. I had them in my temp controlled freezer, but moved them inside the house to a steady 72 degrees. 3 weeks later, same flat level. I've even tried gently swirling the bottles several times and now pretty much shook them and moved them into a hotter area. I almost want to put them in my hot garage at this point.
There is sediment.
5 gallon batch
OG 1.072 - FG 1.015 ABV 7.5%
All grain
California Ale WLP001 with 2 liter starter on stir plate for 3 days. Vigorous and complete fermentation.

Am I just being impatient? I've never had to wait this long before. This isn't exactly a big beer but larger alcohol than I usually do. I'm tempted to get some dry yeast and add a couple granuals into each bottle, however I don't know how much sugar may have been eaten already since it has slight carbonation.
I may also wait another couple weeks and if no carbonation, bite the bullet and get set up with kegs.

Any thoughts? I appreciate your wisdom and advise. Thank you for reading.

Edit: Also, primary fermentation 1 week, secondary 2 weeks with a 3 day cold crash which I've never done before. Cold crashing is basically the only thing different than my usual brewing. I've been told and read cold crashing will absolutely not take out near enough yeast to affect bottle conditioning. Still plenty left.

 

[mkelly601]

How much priming sugar did you use and what was your process?

 

[JaymzMF]

4 oz. typical, boil, dissolve, cool, add to bucket, thoroughly mix.

 

[IslandLizard]

Definitely look into kegging, using closed or near closed transfers into 100% liquid pre-purged kegs. Especially the hoppier IPAs. You can get from grain to glass in 2 weeks, even sooner.

Not that it has anything to do with your carbonation problem, but secondaries are definitely not needed with very, very few exceptions. Again, oxidation being the bandit.

 

[Jag75]

Probably because you cold crashed . I'm just taking guess . Cold crash put the yeast out of the equation. But if you left it to warm up to room temp maybe only a little bit of the yeast woke up causing it to be less carbed .

 

[JaymzMF]

My first thought was because I cold crashed. I know the yeast go to sleep and sometimes have a hard time waking back up especially if they've been over worked. Still, over 5 weeks? Getting a bit frustrating. My next batch of Brown Ale is about to be ready to drink. Didn't cold crash that one. May never again. Just let it cold crash in the bottles once it gets carbonation.
Not sure what to do. I'm going to stop by my LHBS and talk with them about it. I'll also pick up some dry yeast as a possible next course of action.
It's a bummer, I found a couple great threads here on the same subject from several years ago, but the OP nor anyone else involved in the conversation ever came back on to say if the beer ever carbonated or if any other options they tried worked.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

By chance are the caps for bottling? I ask as a friend and homebrewer thought they got a "fantastic deal" on bottle caps. Turns out the caps are for artwork, etc and not for bottling as the caps are missing the inner seal. Possible similar situation?

 

[MaxStout]

If there's still healthy yeast, cold-crashing won't affect carbonation. Once it warms up the yeast become active again.

Your beer is fairly high-gravity, but not enough that it would weaken the yeast. WLP001 has a high alcohol tolerance, so I'd rule that out.

Betting on leaky caps.

 

[IslandLizard]

You sure you added 4 oz priming sugar? Didn't lean on the scale?

If you have an accurate FG jotted down from when you bottled, you could take a new one from one of the undercarbed bottles (degas first). If it's the same, it fermented but you lost the gas. If it's 1 or 2 points higher, you only got partial carbonation pointing to a yeast problem. You didn't add any sorbitol or so, did you?

Some brewers will fill a 12 oz plastic soda bottle (or 2) along with the glass ones, and give it a higher heat environment so they know if there are any unexpected issues, like under- or more importantly, over-carbonation due to under-attenuation or stalled fermentation.

 

[JaymzMF]

Wanted to update anyone that was interested in my carbonation issue. It's weird. I wrote this question last Wednesday. I had tried my beer the night before and was very discouraged. The beer I tried went into the fridge Monday evening. After getting discouraged, I shook them pretty good and put them in an area that gets fairly warm during the day. I decided to go get some dry yeast, open the bottles, add some yeast, and recap. I was certain the caps were ok. I picked up the dry yeast on Thursday. Which is now only 3 days from my last bottle going into the fridge for testing.

Got all set up, opened the first bottle and what do you know? It's carbonated. What the?? From flat to carbonated in 3 days after waiting 5 1/2 weeks? Drank it warm. It's good. Put a few in the fridge, tried one that evening and its carbonated. It's also delicious. May be my best beer yet. Still, weird. Every one I have tried since has been perfectly carbonated and delicious. So, I don't think I was just opening bad bottles. It just took that long. And maybe my last vigorous shake and very warm area for 3 days put it over.

I think I may start gentling rolling/swirling all my bottles in the future. I'm sure had I started that in the beginning, it would have carbonated quicker. I am also considering repitching yeast on bottling day anyway just for assurance. I want to be able to cold crash for a good 3-5 days, plus use gelatin. We will see.

Thanks to all who replied and helped.

 

[kh54s10]

I see the problem is the 3 weeks in the cold. If it was cold enough there would have been not carbonation happening during that time. So ~ 21 days that next to nothing happened. Then a total of 37 left you with just 16 days where you got a little carbonation. Then the extra time at warmer temperatures finished the job.

2 weeks at about 70 degrees is pretty much minimum time to expect full carbonation, with bigger beers - longer. ALL my beers have tasted better at 3 weeks or longer bottle conditioning.