Another flat beer question...with at twist

[TDA]

The basic facts:
I brewed an "Octoberfest" extract beer kit in Novemver.
It stopped fermenting after 3 days. I moved the primary to a warmer location adn stirred things up. Fermentation restarted but very slowly. It took almost 5 weeks in the primary to ferment. Siphoned to the sencondary (added gelatin finings) and left it there 10 days. Bottled the beer using Muntons KreemyX as the priming sugar (boiled with water and put in bottling bucked before siphoning from secondary. Siphoned beer to 2 5 liter mini kegs and 26 12 oz bottles. I siphoned keeping the racking cane off the bottom of the secondary as long as I could. The last two bottles were siphoned from the bottom.

Left the beer 3 weeks to bottle condition and tested one of the last two that were bottled. They had good carbonation and produced a good head but tasted "raw" not ready. One week later open the other second to last beer bottled and it had good carbonation and head and was better. Opened another and it was FLAT, opened another and it was also flat. Opened another and again flat. Gave the bottles a swirl to suspend the yeast and moved the batch to a warmer location for a week. Refrigerated and tested another bottle, still pretty flat.

Questions:
Why would the last 2 bottle have so much more carbonation?

Am I making a mistake by not siphoning from the bottom of the bottling bucket?

Should I just wait longer or???

Should I uncap and add a couple if grains of dry yeast to the bottles?

The Mini Kegs appear to be under a bit of pressure as the bottom of the keg is bulging. Should I attempt to add more yeast or priming sugar?

Sorry for the long winded post that has been covered over and over but I just don't know why the last 2 beers that were bottled would be so different.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, TDA

 

[lgilmore]

did you stir the primer in the bottling bucket?

did you get a good cap seal on all of your bottles?

Just a couple ideas, I'm sure there's more.

 

[TDA]

No, I didn't stir in priming sugar. I put it in the bottling bucked before I siphoned from the secondary thinking the flow from the siphon hose would be enough to stir things up. Should it be stirred?

Yes, the bottle cap do appear to be sealing. There is a sight pressure release when opening the low carbonation flat beers.

My main question is why would the last two beers bottled be so much more carbonated than the others? Any ideas?

 

[dcHokie]

Siphoned to the sencondary (added gelatin finings) and left it there 10 days. Bottled the beer using Muntons KreemyX as the priming sugar (boiled with water and put in bottling bucked before siphoning from secondary. Siphoned beer to 2 5 liter mini kegs and 26 12 oz bottles. I siphoned keeping the racking cane off the bottom of the secondary as long as I could. The last two bottles were siphoned from the bottom.

Left the beer 3 weeks to bottle condition and tested one of the last two that were bottled. They had good carbonation and produced a good head but tasted "raw" not ready. One week later open the other second to last beer bottled and it had good carbonation and head and was better. Opened another and it was FLAT, opened another and it was also flat. Opened another and again flat. Gave the bottles a swirl to suspend the yeast and moved the batch to a warmer location for a week. Refrigerated and tested another bottle, still pretty flat.

Questions:
Why would the last 2 bottle have so much more carbonation?

Am I making a mistake by not siphoning from the bottom of the bottling bucket?

Sorry for the long winded post that has been covered over and over but I just don't know why the last 2 beers that were bottled would be so different.

To clarify: when bottling, you used a siphon from your bottling bucket rather than the spigot on the bottling bucket?

 

[lgilmore]

it is good practice to stir (gently) before bottling. The other thing is while you're siphoning into the bottling bucket pour your priming sugar in 3 stages say every quarter of beer siphoned over. I've done it this way and it seems to work well.

 

[BobC]

I'm not sure I understand how you filled your bottles. It almost sounds like you filled your kegs from the bottling bucket but the bottles from your secondary. If that is so than the last 2 where better carbed because you stirred up the yeast from the bottom of your secondary and the others just didn't get any priming sugar.

 

[BobC]

I would just wait the rest of your bottles may be suffering from lack of yeast so their having to multiply in order to carb your bottles, like under pitching your wort. Just takes longer for them to do their thing.

 

[dcHokie]

I'm not sure I understand how you filled your bottles. It almost sounds like you filled your kegs from the bottling bucket but the bottles from your secondary. If that is so than the last 2 where better carbed because you stirred up the yeast from the bottom of your secondary and the others just didn't get any priming sugar.

I'm still a little confused as well....as I read it, you siphoned from secondary to a bottling bucket and then siphoned again to your bottles and kegs?

Also, you mentioned needing to warm it up, but was this a lager yeast?

 

[jimbot]

How much Muntons KreemyX did you add? Maybe not enough?

--Jimbot

 

[TDA]

I see the confusion. I siphoned from the secondary to the bottling bucket that I had already poured the priming sugar mixture into. I then siphoned from the bottling bucket to the kegs and all of the bottles. I shouldn't have said "secondary" when I said I was bottling. Sorry for the confusion.

The KreemyX package says it is for 23 liters so I measured out a corresponding amount for my 19 liter batch.

It was not a lager yeast but a European Ale yeast (Wyeast) and it was going gangbusters in about 4 hours after pitching based on the airlock activity.

I will follow the usual advice and wait a few more weeks and test again.

Has anyone ever added dry yeast to try and increase carbonation? Did it work?

Thank you all for the input. Next time I will read and edit my post more carefully!

 

[rearview]

It sounds to me like all the priming sugar stayed on the bottom of your bottling bucket and when you got to the end, you had to finally push your racking cane down into the bottom of the bucket and you finally picked up a good amount of priming sugar in those last few bottles.

If this is the case, you are pretty lucky that those last bottles you filled didn't explode (good thing you drank them quickly) and the others may not have had a sufficient amount of sugar in them to carb up properly.

You could open every bottle, prime them, and re-cap and in 2-3 weeks they should be fine. Carb tabs would be a good solution for this (I imagine you don't want to dump them all back into a bottling bucket and re-fill, but you could... be sanitary). You could also put a pre-measured amount of sugar in each bottle, a-la Mr. Beer, but this is hard to be consistent in doing.