HELP!: Flat beer.

[toniogarces1988]

Hoping someone can help me. American Brown Ale is flat after 2 weeks of bottle conditioning at around 70°F. I primed with about 205 gr of corn sugar for about 5 gal. Didn't add any fresh yeast at bottling. It sat in carboys (primary and secondary as I dry hopped) for 4 weeks from pitching. Used swing top bottles. Only a fine layer of dust appears at the bottom of the bottle. I don't know what to do. Should I try dropping a pinch of yeast in each bottle and close back up?

 

[ncbrewer]

205 grams in 5 gallons is a lot. From the Northern Brewer priming calculator, it looks like that would give you around 3.5 volumes, depending on temperature. That could cause explosions in standard recycled bottles. If it does finally carbonate, you could have a problem. I'd use some protective equipment when handling and opening those bottles.

As far as not carbonating, 2 weeks seems like enough, but maybe they're just a little slow. If it was me, I'd start CAREFULLY opening and drinking them flat, hoping they don't carb up. And keep them some place where an explosion won't hurt anybody. Unless you used some really strong bottles, the bottle bomb issue overrides the lack of carbonation.

 

[toniogarces1988]

205 grams in 5 gallons is a lot. From the Northern Brewer priming calculator, it looks like that would give you around 3.5 volumes, depending on temperature. That could cause explosions in standard recycled bottles. If it does finally carbonate, you could have a problem. I'd use some protective equipment when handling and opening those bottles.

As far as not carbonating, 2 weeks seems like enough, but maybe they're just a little slow. If it was me, I'd start CAREFULLY opening and drinking them flat, hoping they don't carb up. And keep them some place where an explosion won't hurt anybody. Unless you used some really strong bottles, the bottle bomb issue overrides the lack of carbonation.

Correction, I did 4.5 oz. I don't know where I got 205 gr from. I think I had my DME starter weight in mind.

 

[toniogarces1988]

Correction, I did 4.5 oz. I don't know where I got 205 gr from. I think I had my DME starter weight in mind.

Also, the bottles are those that Hacker Pschorr come in. They seem pretty heavy duty to me.

 

[ncbrewer]

Without the over-priming problem, you can address the lack of carbonation issue. Four weeks in the fermenter should be fine - that wouldn't cause all the yeast to drop out. Two weeks in bottles is normally enough, but sometimes it can take longer. Try giving it another week or two. High gravity beers take longer to carb up, but being an American Brown Ale I guess that's not an issue. I've had problems with my capper and had some flat beer, but I think that's uncommon. It might be a yeast health problem, and you could add some more yeast, but I'd say give it at least four weeks total before doing that. Note that other than the capper problem, I haven't experienced this, so I'm just going by what I've read.

 

[BrewingAroundtheRrealm]

I had a batch of IPA I brewed back in April do this exact same thing. 2 weeks in half the bottles were still not carbonated. I figured it was the new bottles I had purchased. Maybe I hadn't capped them tight enough. The old bottles were carbonated fine. I left the case of new bottles for another few weeks. This batch was bottled on 4/18. Towards the end of May the new bottles had finally carbonated.

I bottled another batch on 5/6 in the same new bottles. This time capping them extra tight. Putting as much pressure on the capper as I though I could with out breaking them. This time they were perfectly carbonated in two weeks with out issue.

 

[toniogarces1988]

Without the over-priming problem, you can address the lack of carbonation issue. Four weeks in the fermenter should be fine - that wouldn't cause all the yeast to drop out. Two weeks in bottles is normally enough, but sometimes it can take longer. Try giving it another week or two. High gravity beers take longer to carb up, but being an American Brown Ale I guess that's not an issue. I've had problems with my capper and had some flat beer, but I think that's uncommon. It might be a yeast health problem, and you could add some more yeast, but I'd say give it at least four weeks total before doing that. Note that other than the capper problem, I haven't experienced this, so I'm just going by what I've read.

Thanks for the insight. The Brown Ale was 1.056 at pitching and 1.010 at bottling. Like you said, I don't think high alcohol is the problem. Maybe it wasn't warm enough where I was keeping the bottles but it was 68-70° which should be fine in my opinion. Perhaps the issue was the yeast as I only gave about 1.5 days to the starter in the fridge to settle the yeast and decant the rest. Maybe the least flocculent yeast was decanted and the most flocculent remained...

 

[TasunkaWitko]

He said in the opening post that he's using flippies; maybe the gaskets are bad?

I know it is unlikely that ALL of them are bad, but it is possible.

 

[toniogarces1988]

He said in the opening post that he's using flippies; maybe the gaskets are bad?

I know it is unlikely that ALL of them are bad, but it is possible.

Could be but they seemed to work fine for the hacker Pschorr beer that was in them right before I drank them, cleaned them and put my beer into them. I'm puzzled. There's zero carbonation after over 2 weeks.

 

[TurnipGreen]

I wouldn’t start to worry until 3 weeks. Some yeasts are faster than others.

I can prime bottles with healthy second or third generation Nottingham in about a week but WLP 006 usually takes two to three weeks to fully carb. I’d just chalk it up to slow yeast for now. If your beer is still in three weeks or a month start looking at your gaskets.

 

[toniogarces1988]

Wow, that's way more time than I experienced in the past... but then again, I never really used WLP 001 before now. Batch 2 and 3 were fermented with wyeast American ale yeast. Let's see what happens with those.

 

[toniogarces1988]

I had a batch of IPA I brewed back in April do this exact same thing. 2 weeks in half the bottles were still not carbonated. I figured it was the new bottles I had purchased. Maybe I hadn't capped them tight enough. The old bottles were carbonated fine. I left the case of new bottles for another few weeks. This batch was bottled on 4/18. Towards the end of May the new bottles had finally carbonated.

I bottled another batch on 5/6 in the same new bottles. This time capping them extra tight. Putting as much pressure on the capper as I though I could with out breaking them. This time they were perfectly carbonated in two weeks with out issue.

Thanks for the info. I'm using swing tops so I can't apply any more pressure but I'm certain the seal is good enough. I'm thinking it's either too flocculent yeast or conditioning temp.

 

[ncbrewer]

I'll relate a capper problem I had. No problems initially, but wanted to be sure the caps were really tight. (Using a bench capper.) Started pushing down extra hard on the lever - if a little is good, more I better. I started getting a lot of flat beer. A couple of batches later, I went back to just normal force on the lever. No more flat beer.
Lesson learned: If a little is good, more isn't necessarily better.