20 weeks after bottling - hardly any carbonation

[raluttio]

I've gotten a lot of info from everyone here over the past 7 years but I finally have a question I haven't found the answer to.

I bottled an APA back in March (my first jump into all-grain from years of extract) and there is still hardly enough carbonation to create a couple bubbles. There's no hiss or white cloud of CO2 when popping the cap.
I've finally resigned to the fact that I'm going to need to add more sugar or yeast to the bottles but I'm not sure which to do. Both maybe?

The one thing I can say is that I may have used too little sugar. It was my first batch since moving to Brazil and I may have gotten the metric conversion wrong. In this case, how can I know how much sugar to add? Any ideas?

Luckily, I've brewed two more batches since then that have turned out great so I must have fixed whatever I did wrong.

 

[Kee]

If you are not sure how much priming sugar you have in there, do a taste test for sweetness. If it's sweet, just add some dry yeast to each bottle.

 

[TallDan]

Join date: 11-24-2010
First post: 08-07-2017
In that time it appears you moved from .us to .br.

That's got to be some kind of record.

With 20 weeks in the bottle, i'd wager that you under primed. It's unlikely that there wouldn't be enough viable yeast to carbonate in that time. Take an educated guess at how far off you were and test it on a couple of bottles (keep them in a safe place in case of bottle bombs).

That or you used SAE yeast on a metric beer (or vice versa). In that case, you probably stripped the threads out of the yeast.

 

[day_trippr]

Given how much time has already passed, you can afford a week or so for an experiment:

Transfer one bottle into a 12 ounce soda bottle with a twist cap, add whatever amount of primer you normally use (iirc I used 3/4 teaspoon per 12 ounce bottle), put the cap on semi-tight, squeeze out as much air as you can and tighten the cap.

Invert the bottle a few times, then set it aside at "room temperature".
After 4-5 days give the bottle a squeeze - it will eventually become quite hard if there are sufficient yeast extant.

If you let it go a couple of weeks with no change then you'll know you need to re-yeast the bottles...

Cheers!

 

[raluttio]

Transfer one bottle into a 12 ounce soda bottle with a twist cap, add whatever amount of primer you normally use (iirc I used 3/4 teaspoon per 12 ounce bottle), put the cap on semi-tight, squeeze out as much air as you can and tighten the cap.

This is the plan I was looking for. The amount of sugar to put in a partially primed bottle was really my biggest question - hoping to avoid a bomb. I think I'll try 1/2 teaspoon for the experiment and adjust from there for the rest of the bottles.

I'll report back with the results.