Confused about carbonation...

[simonpeternielsen]

Hey,

My second batch of Home Brew was a partial grain Irish Stout made from a Brewers Best Kit. We bottled on St. Patricks Day, and after a week and a half I tried a bottle. It had a huge head and seemed like it turned out awesome. I just recently went to go try some more, and the beer has extremely low carbonation. I thought it may have just been a bad seal on the bottle, so I have opened multiple bottles since, and there is very little carbonation on them. The beer was in primary fermentation for about three weeks and secondary for another couple of weeks.

Any ideas on what would cause a batch to have great carbonation and lose that much carbonation within a couple of weeks?

My brother added the priming sugar to the beer before I got to his house to help bottle, so I am wondering if the priming sugar didn't get evenly distributed throughout the bottles?

Any thoughts would be really appreciated. I'd like to avoid this in the future and learn my lesson now!

Thanks,
simon

 

[TTB-J]

Could be a lot of things - inadequate seals on certain bottles (are you using twist off caps?); inadequate mixing of priming sugar; not chilling the bottles long enough to allow more CO2 to dissolve into the beer.

 

[Revvy]

Basically you beer WASN'T carbed when you opened the first one, it just had some gas. 1 week is not enough time- what you have is called "false" or noob carb- the co2 is not fully locked in yet. So when you opened another one, you got a bigger sense of what's truly going on.

The co2 hasn't been fully produced yet, let alone gone into solution.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.


Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."

Watch poindexter's video in there for an idea of carbonation development over time.



What you experienced is simply what he shows in the first week's openning,.

Come back in about 2-3 more weeks and you'll see what true carbonation is.

 

[Dougan]

Hey, a local guy.

Agree that there could be multiple explanations. I would try a couple more. When I bottled my first few batches, I didn't mix the sugar into solution very well. I just racked onto it and thought that would be enough. I ended with some bottles being very overcarbonated, and some being very undercarbonated. Not sure if that's what's happened to you, but it's possible.

 

[simonpeternielsen]

Thanks for the direction, guys! This is some good stuff to look over, and I think it will help alot. Thank you for being patient with a noob!

 

[spaceyaquarius]

I did the same thing. Only racked my corn sugar bottling and then got over-carbed and regular carbed beers. Then when I force carbed with the CO2 tank, and also corn sugar carbed in the keg, I was waiting 2 weeks and drinking the whole batch and not happy with the carbonation. With Belgian Wheat WitBeers you have to wait longer.

You get the lots of head with the low bubbling in one glass, then the lower head with higher bubbling in the next glass, and then no head with no bubbles in the next 2 glasses. You have to stop drinking it and just wait. I did this about 5 times until I got it.