Carbonation mistake on my Russian imperial stout...

[greenbrewer11]

I'm still very new to brewing and still feeling a lot of things out so bare with me here... I brewed my first RIS and it tastes amazing before carbonation. I didn't want to tie up a keg for the aging process so I bottled it. We'll I bottled a week ago and put it all in the fridge after bottling(oops). I pulled it all out after I was advised that it won't carbonate in the bottles at cold temps(or at all because of high alcohol content, 9.16%). Will it come around now being at 70 temp ??? Or do I need to do something different? And why will a keg carbonate at cold temps but not the bottles? Thanks!!!

 

[billl]

Kegs only carbonate at low temps if you hook them to a highly pressurized tank of pure CO2.

Don't worry though. If you've got them at 70 degrees, they will carb up eventually. You might want to swirl them around a little just to make sure you've got all the yeast in suspension .

 

[rmr9]

It may carbonate...what yeast strain did you use? The higher alcohol content may make it a little slower to carbonate, but if you've got an alcohol tolerant yeast strain it should be ok. When you carbonate in the bottle, the CO2 that goes into solution is a result of additional fermentation by your yeast, presumably of the priming sugar you would have added in. When you drop to low temps, the yeast can go dormant and therefore won't ferment the sugars so you won't get carbonation. Make sense? You can carb colder when you keg because you're forcing CO2 into solution so you're not depending on yeast activity for carbonation.

 

[NTexBrewer]

A keg carbonates because you are forcing CO2 into the beer.

Bottle conditioning carbonates from the Yeast eating the priming sugar and producing CO2 that gets trapped in the bottle. The yeast needs warm temperatures, low 70's, to keep working and consume the priming sugar.

Putting a beer in the Fridge before it has eaten all of the priming sugar usually makes the yeast go dormant and carbonation stops. It may be possible that with warming up your yeast will wake up and consume the priming sugar and carbonate properly.

Normal gravity beers can carbonate in 2 weeks. Higher gravity beers can take longer sometimes 6 weeks.

I would make sure the beer stays at a constant temperature in the low 70's and gently agitate the bottles to rouse the settled yeast to see if this helps get the yeast back to consuming the priming sugar.

How much priming sugar did you add?

 

[Spelaeus]

The alcohol issue mainly depends on the yeast, but most common clean-ish ale yeasts that you'd have used should carbonate just fine at 9.16% in a reasonable time frame. As to the temp, they won't carbonate in the fridge because the yeast drop out and more or less go to sleep at low temps. But they'll wake back up now that you've raised the temp again. I agree about the rousing. I'd say just tip each bottle upside down a little then tip it back to put the yeast that may be sleeping at the bottom of your bottles back into suspension.