Carbonating in a bottle w/ no yeast?

[Psywar]

Hey, good morning everyone.

So I am making a Christmas Mead/Cyser and I was planning on bottling it and giving it out as presents for Christmas. I am planning on carbonating this drink, but I ran into a problem.

I am very new to all this as of this year and I have a kegging system and I though I could carbonate and bottle and it would keep, but I put my Belgian Tripel into a growler a few weekends back and it only kept the carbonation for about 3 days. I opened it on Day 3 and it was slightly carbonated but nothing to write home about.

This mead/cyser I made killed off my yeast during the primary. I ended up around 15% ABV.

Is there any way to still put some of this in bottles and get the bottles to carbonate?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Revvy]

Well first, filling a growler, and bottling from the keg are two different things. A growler doesn't hold carb that well even if you get it filled at a pub. Part of it has to do with the design of the lid.

The best way to bottle from the keg is to use a beergun... you can make a version of one from the instructions in this thread.

If you don't want to go that route you can try to carb in the bottle by adding fresh yeast, BUT at 15% you're going to have to use a yeast that is alcohol tolerant.

If the cider is already in the keg, then I would fill the bottles, leaving headspace. I would then make a priming solution, I would boil 2 cups of water with 5 ounces of sugar (1oz/gallon) then cool it off (cover the pan) when it was cool I would then add a packet yeast to the solution, let it hydrate on the surface for 10 minutes or so, when it starts to get frothy I would then stir it with a sanitized spoon to mix priming solution and yeast.

Then I would get a graduated children's medicine dropper- like this.

And I would sanitize it and squeeze in 1 tsp or 5 ML of the solution into each bottle (2 cups will actually give you about 10 ml or 2 tsps/ 12 ounce bottles of cider) and cap.

 

[Psywar]

Right on dude!
Thank you very much for the help!
I will probably try and build the beergun and see how that works out first and if all else fails I will do the priming solution.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

yeah, what he said. And try champagne yeast if your alcohol is really that high, although I don't know how that would affect the flavors.