Adding yeast to under-carbed bottles of barleywine

[skeezerpleezer]

I made a barley wine back in Jan or Feb or 2011. I didn't bottle until August 2011, and when I did I added some Cali ale yeast and the normal amount of priming sugar, but I think the 13.2% alcohol may have killed the yeast. I have since had it tucked away aging, but recently tried a bottle. It is great, but under-carbonated. What is the best method of increasing carbonation? I was considering opening, adding a bit of champagne yeast to each bottle, and re-capping but didn't know if that was the best way to do it. Thanks.

 

[Ed4]

This same thing happened to me with a big RIS. My final abv was ~12.5%.

The FG was 1.040 and that was with adding champagne yeast three weeks into fermentation. IME the champagne yeast only ate the simple sugars and didnt touch anything else.

I tried multiple things to get the bottles to carb up. I uncapped and recapped three times.

1) added a 1/2 tsp of cane sugar and 5 grains of US-05 to each bottle - didnt work
2) added 5 grains of champagne yeast to each bottle - didnt work
3) re-hydrated a pack of dry yeast in one cup of water and added 10 drops of the yeast that settle to the bottom - didnt work

I dont mean to get you down. These were just some of the things that I tried.

After one year in the bottle the best I was able to manage was flat beer. I started kegging about six months ago. After two years (brewed Jan 2010) in the bottle I dumped them all into a keg under a CO2 blanket and force carbed. When I opened all the bottles to dump them in the keg a couple of them did make a little noise as I opened them. The vast majority made no noise at all. I was able to keg almost three gallons of the beer.

Try several things but you might want to have a back up plan. Either dumping everything back into the bottling bucket and re-bottling or find someone who can keg and dump them all into a keg and force carb it. Oxidation will be a concern no matter what you do. With an aged beer there will be some oxidation anyway.


Ed

 

[DrummerBoySeth]

One simple thing to try before re-pitching into the bottles is this... Take all your bottles you have cellaring, and turn them upside down in the cases so that the small yeast cake on the bottom of the bottle falls through the beer to the cap. Leave it this way for a day or 2 to let the yeast settle through the beer to the tops of the bottles. After a few days, flip the bottles back the right way again, so that the yeast can settle back to the bottom again. Re check for carbonation after the bottles have been right side up again for one week. I have found that this method seems to speed up carbonation in those stubborn bottles.

This method only works if you have viable yeast in the bottles. You can also try increasing the temperature in the cellaring room above 70 degrees to help encourage the yeast to get eating again.

If those ideas do not work, then I suspect you may have to open, repitch, and recap each bottle.

 

[skeezerpleezer]

Thanks. I will give turning them upside down a shot. I already tried raising the temps, but it didn't seem to help. It that doesn't work, I will try the champagne yeast.

If I have to I can keg, I have 4 empty ones, but a beer that size I normally try to bottle. The keg may last awhile, especially with hot weather here.