Low carb and pissed

So I brewed a stout and bottled it 3 weeks ago now... I bottled 4.5 gallons of it with 3.6 ozs of corn sugar for 2.6 volumes... I opened a bottle today and its not carbed enough... very slight head if any at all... what should i do? beer has been sitting on my basement floor for 3 weeks now. dont know what to do!!!! nif it was carbed like it should be it would be amazing, i just want to drink this!

um... drink it.

What's your temp around the basement floor area? And I think some of those darker/heavier beers take longer to carb than others, so I'd probably wait a bit longer.

Stouts don't have a lot of carb either, can you sensorarilly tell if it's acheived the full 2.6 expected volumes? (compared to another beer thta is 2.6 that is)

Stouts in my personal experience often take longer to carbonate. Also, if this is a high %alc. Beer that could affect things also if it is cold in your basement.

I'd just give it time to do its thing. Stouts do quite well with a bit of aging too!

KevinM got it - your basement floor transmits cold into the bottle, you need them to be warmer to carb - move upstairs to a warm area, before conditioning in the basement.

mcwilcr said:

Stouts in my personal experience often take longer to carbonate. Also, if this is a high %alc. Beer that could affect things also if it is cold in your basement.

I'd just give it time to do its thing. Stouts do quite well with a bit of aging too!

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yep, heavier beers take a long time to carbonate; sometimes a couple of months, not weeks. and get better too

Thanks guys... I've moved the beer upstairs... And also flipped all the bottles end over end a few times to try and resuspend the yeast.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.

Temp and gravity are the two factors that contribute to the time it takes to carb beer. But if a beer's not ready yet, or seems low carbed, and you added the right amount of sugar to it, then it's not stalled, it's just not time yet.

Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."

If a beer isn't carbed by "x number of weeks" you just have to give them more time. If you added your sugar, then the beer will carb up eventually, it's really a foolroof process. All beers will carb up eventually. A lot of new brewers think they have to "troubleshoot" a bottling issue, when there really is none, the beer knows how to carb itself. In fact if you run beersmiths carbing calculator, some lower grav beers don't even require additional sugar to reach their minimum level of carbonation. Just time.

Fliipping the beers around wasn't really necessary (the yeast know what to do), but moving the beers upstairs was right. The yeast cake will settle back down in a couple of days.

Moving to warmer area upstairs = good. Flipping bottles = meh, but it makes you feel like you're doing something to help.

My 1.050 pale ales carbonate in 2 weeks. ALL of my 1.060 stouts have ALWAYS taken 6 weeks.

To (loosely) summarize Revvy's article: Time + temperature + patience = properly carbonated beer.