Adding yeast to bottles

[mugencage]

I've got a high gravity Dubbel (9.57 ABV) that's been in the bottle for a little over three months now. I used brown sugar as my primer. They've been sitting in a 75 deg room since Aug 24th. I opened one this past weekend. It tastes good but the carbonation is low. Can I add a few grains of dry yeast to each bottle to kick up the carbonation or should I just give them more time, maybe at 80 deg?

 

[balrog]

Did the yeast already in the bottle eat all the priming sugar? You'd have to degas thoroughly and check whether the SG was still at the FG when you bottled or higher, which would indicate the yeast had not eaten all the priming sugar in which case I suppose you could add some bottling yeast. But if the SG matches FG at bottling then the yeast has eaten all the priming sugar and adding more yeast really wouldn't do anything. You'd need to add sugar.

 

[mugencage]

Balrog, to figure that out do I open a bottle to let out the carb that exists then check the gravity?

 

[balrog]

Yeah, you'll have to really degas, let it sit long time, pour back and forth between containers, use a whisk, try not to drink it, etc etc.

 

[mugencage]

Ha. Got it. I’ll give it a shot.

 

[flars]

How many volumes of CO2 was your intent? How much brown sugar was added to what volume to carbonate?

 

[mugencage]

I was going for 3.0 vols. I used 5.9 ozs of brown sugar.

 

[myndflyte]

I guess 3 months is a pretty good amount of time. I imagine you're going to let this age a bit longer anyway right? I say do the degass thing but maybe crack another bottle, add some yeast and wait a month. See if that bottle is now carbed and the others aren't. If that's the case then add yeast to the rest of them.

I had this happen with a barleywine. It just would not carb so I added yeast to each bottle and that took care of the problem.

 

[portguy]

I was going for 3.0 vols. I used 5.9 ozs of brown sugar.

Thats about right if it was a 5 gallon batch.