bottle carbonation time

[Sandow]

I'm sure this is a noob question that has been answered a dozen times but I couldn't find an explicit answer when I searched. How long should it take to get the carbonation up after bottling?

I used frozen apple juice diluted out to 1.5x of the instructed concentration. Added 2 pounds of light brown sugar and nutrients into 5 gallon initial volume. then heated to 165 for about 10 minutes. Pitched red star champagne yeast the next day and ran it in the primary for two weeks until dry. Had it in the secondary for another three weeks before back sweetening with xylose and priming with a can of apple juice concentrate in the final volume of 4 gallons. I bottled it all in 22oz bottles about three weeks ago and it is all still effectively flat. Am I being impatient expecting it to have carbonated by now or has something gone wrong?

Thanks in advance,
-Sandow

 

[krackin]

Did the apple concentrate have preservatives? Did you check to see what the carbs were on the label to determine sugar content?

 

[Sandow]

No preservatives. Same brand of juice I used for the initial fermentation (Seneca) with about 168g of carbs.

Using one of the calculators, that works out in the ballpark of 3 to 3.5 volumes of CO2 unless I'm blowing the math.

 

[Arpolis]

I had the same issue with a white grape peach wine. I back sweetened with a can of concentrate and nothing at all happened. I pored a wine bottle out. Diluted with a little water. Maybe 1 part water to 5 parts wine and re-bottled that. It started up just fine then. Not sure what is up with the Welche's concentrate. I know the wine was well below the yeast ABV limit so still not sure. But from now on I am not priming with concentrate. Back to priming with invert sugar.

 

[krackin]

The temp didn't possibly drop on you and chill the bottles did it? Also are you sure your caps snugged up tightly?

I've never used that yeast, I generally use an ale yeast for cider. I grew up using wild and bread yeasts also because that is the way it was way back in the 60's. Even still, sometimes cider is aggravatingly slow. Give it time if everything else looks good.

 

[Randzor]

3 weeks sometimes for me

 

[KingDeNNiZ]

I am a newbie. But manage to get the carbonation going. My last batch after fermentation. I added apple juice instead of priming sugars. . Corn sugar for props. But less than 24 this thing was bubbling and ready to blow


DeNNiZ

 

[Sandow]

The temp never dropped after bottling. They have been at room temp the entire time. It is possible that the temp dropped down to the mid 50s while it was racking but I wouldn't have thought it would matter. This yeast has a very high EtOH tolerance so I have a hard time believing that it has hit the cap. Is the EtOH tolerance temperature dependent?

I'll plate some out at the lab tomorrow just to see if it is still alive but I'm just going to dump it all into a keg and force it. Bottling seems like more trouble than its worth at this point.