Slainte!

[seasnan]

Hey all,
I've just begun enjoying my first batch of homebrew, a southern English Brown ale. The flavor is spot on but the carbonation leaves much to be desired. I believe this is due to inadequate amounts of active yeast in the bottles. I used a yeast culture from a friends batch so I think there just wasn't enough to make it all the way through to the bottling. Any ideas on how to revive the beer after it's been in the bottle for a month or so? Could adding yeast and sugar to each bottle do the trick? I so, ho much should I add?

I'm interested in doing some fruit beers in the near future. I'm thinking of taking advantage of the many berry farms in VT and making a strawberry or blueberry ale. Does anyone know of any good recipes?

Once I have a few batches under my belt, I hope to try some traditional gruits (with no hops) and some meads or braggots.

I'm definitely open to suggestions, comments or hints.

 

[mikescooling]

You might try keeping the beer in a warmer place and shaking them up a little, kinda mix the yeast up. Yeast are funny, it's better to use new yeast as much as possible, each generation the possibility of the yeast changing is greater. You can do a starter with new yeast, then split that up for later uses. The people over in the yeast section live for this kind of thing.

 

[seasnan]

What temperature would you suggest? I kept the bottles in my living room which was in the high 60's pretty consistently.

I'm going to use new yeast for my next batch for sure.

 

[Cyclman]

Depending on the OG, yeast can take time to carb up bottles. I'd leave them for a few weeks, see what happens.

Unless you extensively aged the beer, you likely have plenty of yeast in suspension.

 

[seasnan]

The beer was in the carboy for 10 days and then in bottles for 4 weeks, give or take. I opened the first bottle at 1 week and have been trying a bottle every few days to get a feel for the maturation. I haven't noticed a change in the carbonation. Do you think it needs longer then a month to fully carbonate? That seems like a long time to me. My OG was 1.042.

 

[roastquake]

ceud mìle fàilte!