Did I do the right thing?

[TacoGuthrie]

I opened up a bottle of my house IPA and it was dead flat. One more bottle, same thing. It had been bottle conditioning for >4 weeks including time i was away for xmas holidays. Why?Why? I was busting my brain trying to figure out what went wrong.

My best guess is that I somehow simply forgot to add corn sugar. I was doing a lot of things that day: bottling one batch, racking another and even brewing another.

So this is what I did to try to correct the carbonation: I added a cooper's sugar drop to each bottle but before i put it in the bottle i 'dipped' it into some dry yeast so it took a few granules of yeast with it into the bottle. I figure i'll store it @70F for a couple weeks and see if it carbs up.

Did i do the right thing?

 

[Kirbster]

There should have been enough yeast in the bottles to carb the batch. You probably didnt have to dip the carb drops in yeast. As far as them not carbonating, unless there was something catastrophic happening to the beer it should carb with the addition of priming sugar. With brewing and bottling in one day, it is possible you could have forgotten the corn sugar. With it being an IPA recapping them is not much of a problem. Just expect some or much of the hop aroma to be dissipated.

 

[TacoGuthrie]

Kirbster I wasn't sure about adding the dry yeast but i figured 5-10 granules of a yeast wouldn't hurt. I guess i was playing it safe.

one of the reasons i think i forgot to add corn sugar is that I don't see anything in my notes regarding how many oz I used. I usually keep pretty good paper notes for each brew, with the sugar as the last note for that brew sheet. However I don't have anything written down.

too bad about the hop aroma loss on the ipa but if this carbs up the beer it will be worth it.