Bottled beer not carbonating?!

[elvestinkle]

Greetings,

So my crew and I've been brewing all year, and we have never had a problem with bottle conditioning to date. We pitch priming sugar boiled in water into bottling bucket while racking. Viola! Carbonation after a week, and good conditioning thereafter.

So naturally for a batch of beer I'm doing for my friend's wedding, for which I went higher than I normally do (2.4 volumes), I opened one up after a week in bottle...

There's not much going on. No head, barely any bubbles on the side of the glass even after about 15 minutes

I'm not yet ready to panic just yet. 4 weeks remain until the wedding--lots of time for the little beasties to do their magic. I'll open one a week before the wedding as a sanity check. But am I cooked if it's still flat? Is there any way to salvage this?

 

[Yooper]

Normally, it takes about 3 weeks for a bottle conditioned beer to be fully carbed up at room temperature. I'd just guess and say maybe it's cooler now than it was when you were drinking a beer that had only been in the bottle a week, as it shouldn't really be carbed up by then unless it's pretty warm.

Keep it somewhere at least 70 degrees, and check one again in two weeks. Put it in the fridge overnight first, though, to make sure the co2 is fully dissolved in the beer. In two weeks, it should be far better

But just to be sure, when you say you carbed up to 2.4 volumes, how much priming sugar did you use in 5 gallons?

 

[bdupree]

i'm sure it will be fine in a few weeks. that sounds normal. I can't stress enough that you should wait at least 3-4 weeks before drinking your beers. There is usually some co2 in teh bottle after a week (depending on the temperature), but it's not absorbed into the beer yet so you get a flat beer with a monster head. it's easy to salvage if you forget to add priming sugar when you bottle, just get some carbonation tabs to add to the bottles then recap them.

 

[passedpawn]

Most beers carbonate to a fizz in a week. They will foam when poured. They will NOT have the proper CO2 dissolved into the body of the beer tho.

If you did not get any phssst when you opened after a week, move those beers to a much warmer spot. Yeast is most happy at 100F, so don't worry about the temp, just get them to the warm spot. Flavor will not be affected.

 

[elvestinkle]

My solution is to throw a blanket over the stack (about 12 cases). I don't have much closet space. Also, I get to laugh at myself--I checked the date I bottled and I realize that I bottled it 5 days later than I though. Which would be why it had only just started to carbonate...

Good thing the wedding is still a month off...