First Time Brewer Bottle Conditioning Woes

[grggrrs176]

Hey guys.

First time poster here. Was hoping you could help me better understand bottle conditioning.

I'm brewing my first beer right now (IPA 6.8%) and I'm in the bottling phase. Everything has gone according to what I expected would happen while brewing except for right now. I've had my bottles stored away in a dark place (approx. 70F) for 8 days now and I'm seeing no activity whatsoever.

I'm not sure what I should be looking for at this stage in the process but the only noticeable change I've seen is a thin white film forming at the top of all the bottles. I was expecting to see bubble starting to rise up the side of the glass (maybe not?).

I'm using dextrose which I bought from a homebrew store. I can't remember if it was 1 Oz. or 5 Oz. but the guy told me it was enough for a 5 gallon batch (I'm only brewing 1 gallon) so I used about 3 tablespoons of dextrose which appeared to be about 1/5th of the bag.

Long story short, I'm worried I didn't use enough dextrose. I was expecting to see a lot more activity after one week but maybe I'm wrong.

Could you please lend me some insight on the stages of bottle conditioning?

Thanks for your time.

 

[agrazela]

You probably put about 1/2 to 3/4 oz of dextrose in there, which should be fine for 1 gal. It's gonna take 2 or 3 weeks to carb up, and you won't see much happening. After that, I'd advise waiting another couple weeks for the yeasts to settle, a week in the fridge, then enjoy.

 

[doug293cz]

You shouldn't see any activity in the bottles. The carbonation creates pressure in the bottle head space, and that pressure prevents bubbles from forming in the beer. You only get visible bubbles when you open the bottles and release the pressure in the head space.

The only way to check carbonation in glass bottles is to open a bottle. With PET bottles, the bottle will feel harder as internal pressure builds up. I wait at least a week before opening the first bottle to check carb. I've never seen much carb after the first week. Things are usually more promising after two weeks, but I try to wait three weeks before I put a batch in the drinking rotation.

Brew on

 

[jtratcliff]

You can find priming sugar calculators on line that will tell you exactly how much to use... you'll want to weigh it out next time. Eyeballing 1/5 of a bag is likely to be inconsistent.