Help

[foley178]

This is the second batch I've bottled with absolutely no carbonation. I'm so frustrated being new with this and both of my sets of beer have no had any bubbles. I've used the correct sugar and I followed all instructions for mixture of sugar and wort prior to bottling. What could I be doing wrong? I had excellent yeast growth this time around. Am I suppose to be loosing the yeast at the bottom for bottling o what? Plz help me as I'm getting consistently upset with my terrible brewing abilities

 

[jtratcliff]

How big of a batch? How much priming sugar? What OG & FG? What temp are you conditioning at?

 

[foley178]

5 gallon, 4 Oz of sugar. Don't have gravities got to look for note book, and 70 degrees

 

[jtratcliff]

Hmmm... All sounds right to me. How long in primary? How long in the bottle?

Maybe just need to bump the temp up a tad and give it more time.

I usually start sampling mine after 1 week but they're not quite right until at least 3 weeks in the bottle. And mine are usually at room temp which is higher than 70 for our house.

 

[Jimbodaman]

I would check these things in this order, make sure bottle have good seal, some cappers if you press too hard they bend the caps and they don't always seal right. Next after you boil your sugar water, rack the beer on top of it and then gently stir with a sanitized spoon. 3rd I would make add a packet of new yeast at bottling and gently stir. If none of those work and your doing 4 oz for 5 gal at 70 degrees then I don't know what it could be.

 

[foley178]

Hmmm... All sounds right to me. How long in primary? How long in the bottle?

Maybe just need to bump the temp up a tad and give it more time.

I usually start sampling mine after 1 week but they're not quite right until at least 3 weeks in the bottle. And mine are usually at room temp which is higher than 70 for our house.

2 1/2 weeks primary. 2 weeks bottles and room is roughly 70-72 degrees

 

[JunkCatsOnThePorch]

Hey, I had the same thing happen to me when I first started! I Boiled the sugar in too little amount of water and it just all stayed at the bottom of the bottling bucket. I now use a little over 2 cups water, and 3.5-5 Oz of corn sugar (dextrose) depending on the style. I like 5 Oz gets it nice n' carbed!. Boil this for 10 minutes. Cool. add to BB, siphon beer on top and bang you should be golden.

I also recommend ever so gently stirring in the sugar before filling bottles, it will be more consistent

Hope this helps! And yea, we have all been new brewers wondering what the heck is going on so don't sweat it.

If you want to save your current bottles, you could buy coopers or brewers best carbonation drops (they are big pieces of sugar) and drop in each bottle and re seal. Worked for me.

 

[Kharnynb]

any sweeter flavour than expected?

It can be the sealing, in which case, it shouldn't taste too sweet.

Other than that, how long did you leave it in the fridge before testing? maybe the co2 didn't distribute back into the beer yet.

 

[foley178]

Hey, I had the same thing happen to me when I first started! I Boiled the sugar in too little amount of water and it just all stayed at the bottom of the bottling bucket. I now use a little over 2 cups water, and 3.5-5 Oz of corn sugar (dextrose) depending on the style. I like 5 Oz gets it nice n' carbed!. Boil this for 10 minutes. Cool. add to BB, siphon beer on top and bang you should be golden.

I also recommend ever so gently stirring in the sugar before filling bottles, it will be more consistent

Hope this helps! And yea, we have all been new brewers wondering what the heck is going on so don't sweat it.

If you want to save your current bottles, you could buy coopers or brewers best carbonation drops (they are big pieces of sugar) and drop in each bottle and re seal. Worked for me.

So I see. I used 16 oz of water

 

[william_shakes_beer]

16 oz is 2 cups, which is what I generally used. Are you cooling the priming solution after boiling and before pouring into the beer? Boiling water will kill yeast (although I doubt 16 OZ in 5 gallons could kill ALL the YEAST) what's your OG and FG? I have done cider that ended at about 12% ABV, and the product refused to carb, no matter how long I gave it. The gravity was just too high, and the yeast died.

 

[foley178]

My children have misplaced my notebook so we have the same guess at gravity. And yes I allowed it to cool and mixed

 

[foley178]

Gave it two additional weeks and we are now Carbed

 

[jtratcliff]

Gave it two additional weeks and we are now Carbed

Aha!

The solution was to RDWHAHB!