First batch of beer is spectacularly flat - how do I fix it?

[Ringoshoe]

I brewed a pale ale for my first ever brewing attempt. Everything seemed to be going well, I racked it to a secondary after the SG settled down (10 days), let it settle (1 week) and then bottled (10 days ago). I wanted to add a touch of honey to the flavor, so instead of priming sugar, I racked onto honey before bottling. I used grolsch bottles, and one PET bottle to monitor the carbonation. The PET bottle quickly firmed up, (although even after a week it still has a little give in it) and after giving them a week, I put one in the fridge for three days before pouring to a glass and drinking.

There was a nice hiss of gas when I popped the bottle, and it foamed on the pour, but the head looked off. Big bubbles, and not very dense. Reminded me a bit of thick soap bubbles. Flavor was good when I drank, but the beer itself was flat as water. Does anyone have a guess what I've done wrong, and how do I make it better?

 

[Shooter]

One week isn't long enough. Assuming you used the proper amount of sugar, they need to sit at around 70 degrees for at least two more weeks, perhaps longer to be properly carbonated.

 

[Shooter]

Also, they should carb with honey, but that may influence things as well.

 

[D0ug]

It sounds like they've only conditioned for a week. 3 weeks at 70*F is the recommendation. Though some CO2 has been produced, it has not had any time to be absorbed back into solution in the beer, hence the week foamy head and hiss, but no fizz.

Additionally, I think I have read that honey can take longer for ale yeast to metabolize than priming sugar, so you may have additional waiting time on your hands before they are truly conditioned.

Throw them into the back of a closet for another month or so and brew something else in the mean time! One of the House Pale Ales (Like Yooper's or Edwort's) can be finished pretty quickly, and if you bottle with dextrose you won't have to wait as long as with the honey, they might be drinkable in 2 weeks instead of 4-6.

 

[BrewerinBR]

1 week is not enough to carbonate. 2 weeks is not enough to carbonate.

It will take 3 weeks at 70 degrees F as a basic minimum to carbonate. I have given up even testing them until 21 days have passed. Then I put 1 in the fridge for 24 hours and then test.

Adding honey as priming sugar may not add that much honey flavor. Honey is pure sugar and is completely fermentable, just a couple of questions?
How big is the batch, what was the FG, how much honey did you add and did you boil it first?

 

[homebrewdad]

Another vote for "you haven't let them carbonate nearly long enough". 3 weeks at 70 degrees is the baseline for most beer styles. After that, a few days (or more) in the fridge helps get the CO2 better into suspension.

Some beers take a lot longer to carb up. Assuming that you used enough honey, however, they WILL carb - give it time.

 

[Ringoshoe]

Aha - this was a Mr. Beer kit, which says it'll give you drinkable beer in three weeks, start to finish (although that may be the truth if you actually follow the directions instead of fiddling around with things like I did ). I'll give them another three weeks of bottle conditioning and see where things stand then. I'd wondered if not waiting long enough had been part of the problem, since there was obviously CO2 in the bottle, just not in the beer itself.

Batch size was ~2.5 gallons, and I didn't write down the last SG reading and have forgotten what it was. I don't have the source with me on hand, but I had a conversion table showing how much priming sugar honey was equivalent to, and used 5 tbs (iirc - I am learning I need to write a lot more down...).

 

[dbhokie]

Honey is already inverted sugar, almost totally (fructose)d-fructose and d-glucose (dextrose), these two types tend to be in equal parts, sucrose generally has a very low content in honey. They are monosaccharides, so they should carb fairly fast, I wouldn't imagine the time difference to be very great, but others with more experience than me can probably speak to that. When I added honey to my primary the last time, it fermented very quickly and explosively, and it all went out, down to 1.005.

Drinkable is a very ambiguous word with beer.

I was actually curious as to how you made sure the honey was mixed in well in order to ensure equal parts delivery to each bottle.

 

[BierMuncher]

Honey is notorious for being slow to ferment.

As a new brewer, you should stick to recipes verbatim and follow standard processes (like adding priming sugar to...prime). After you have a few succesful batches under your belt, then start experimenting.

21 days at 70 degrees applies to priming sugar. Honey may take twice as long.

 

[Hang Glider]

...I was actually curious as to how you made sure the honey was mixed in well in order to ensure equal parts delivery to each bottle.

^
This

 

[djfriesen]

Boil it in water, the same way as priming sugar. Works pretty well.

 

[Ringoshoe]

I was actually curious as to how you made sure the honey was mixed in well in order to ensure equal parts delivery to each bottle.

I heated one cup of water and stirred the honey into that until dissolved. Poured that into the bottling bucket and then racked the beer on top of it. Gave it a little stir to make sure it was mixed, and then bottled.

 

[dbhokie]

Post back after it carbonates good, I am interested in your result, I love honey. I'd be a cracked out bee.

It's so hard to wait, Got 3 batches in bottles right now I'm waiting on.

 

[Ringoshoe]

Will be cracking open and sharing the last bottle of my 2.5 gallon batch today. After more research, it seems like I should've used about 1/3 more honey than I did (so at least six teaspoons of honey instead of four). The beer was good, the honey having left a very faint hint of it's original flavor, although the carbonation was pretty light and it tended to go flat quite quickly.

I'm already brewing another batch for further experimentation, and have racked it onto blackberries to determine what that does in combination with a pale ale.