Beer hasnt carbed at all

[themack22]

I bottle conditioned my stout. I did a clone of northern brewers big honkin stout.

I primed with 3.5 oz of table sugar

OG 1060
FG 1020

it's been a week and there is little to no carbonation. What gives?

 

[Stauffbier]

One week is too soon. Give it at least another week and check again. 2 or 3 weeks would be even better.

 

[WissahickonBrew]

3 weeks MINIMUM!

Try force carbing in the future, you'll never go back!

 

[BigFloyd]

For that beer, you're probably not going to get full carbonation until about 6-7 weeks at 70-75*F. Another 6 weeks (3 months total) at room temp before it's going to be well-conditioned for the best flavor.

Trying any brew at just a week in the bottle is likely to disappoint. With a stout like this, it's an exercise in futility.

3.5 ounces of priming sugar in 5 gallons is a bit light. What volume of CO2 were you shooting for?

 

[MindenMan]

I completely agree with BigFloyd. That beer will be a relatively slow to carbonate, and if you drink it young you will never know what a gem of a beer it could have been.

 

[Beer-lord]

I brewed this and kegged mine on 11/16. I bottle conditioned a few and tried one at 3 weeks and while good, it has a long way to go. I'm not even putting my keg in the keezer until it's been sitting there 2 months.
I'm also going to keep a bottle for about 4 months and try it then. And I like my stouts lightly carbed, even American stouts.
Try keeping them closer to 70 and giving them a few more weeks.

 

[denverd1]

hide a 6 pack (at least) from yourself. Try to let it sit for a year. It will only get better

 

[zachattack]

For that beer, you're probably not going to get full carbonation until about 6-7 weeks at 70-75*F. Another 6 weeks (3 months total) at room temp before it's going to be well-conditioned for the best flavor.

Trying any brew at just a week in the bottle is likely to disappoint. With a stout like this, it's an exercise in futility.

3.5 ounces of priming sugar in 5 gallons is a bit light. What volume of CO2 were you shooting for?

While I agree it might take more than a week, and I also agree that the beer will benefit from some aging, saying that it will take 6-7 weeks to carb is very pessimistic. At a 1.060 OG it's not particularly high in gravity, as long as it's not kept too cool it should carb up in 2-3 weeks like any other beer. But I do think that it will benefit from a bit of aging, most stouts do.

3.5 ounces of table sugar will get him in the neighborhood of 2.2 volumes of CO2, which sounds great to me.

Depending where you live it can be a challenge to find a warm place for bottle conditioning in the winter, I've lived in apartments/houses where the thermostat is only set above 55 degrees for a few hours a day. I've also lived in apartments where the heat was included and it was a good 75 degrees even on the coldest day of the year. If your house is on the cooler side it can add quite a bit of time to the carb time, and if the bottles are kept too cool it might never get there. At one place I built a little "warm box" in the corner of an unheated closet with a 40W incandescent light bulb, a fan, some cardboard and blankets for insulation. I could easily keep the temperature in the upper 70s with just that 40W lamp, even when the closet temp was in the low 50s.