High gravity wee heavy flat and cloudy when cold

[Davidm714]

My 10.5% abv all grain wee heavy has been in bottles for a month and a half. At room temp the beer is bright, clear, carbed nicely and tastes great. But when I put one in the refrigerator for 24 hours it turned very cloudy and is completely flat. I'm stumped and can't find any comparable situation threads on any forums

The starting gravity was 1.105 and final gravity was 1.025. 4 week primary fermentation and 4 weeks in secondary all temp controlled and consistent. Brew day and fermentation went perfectly. No off flavors at all. Any help figuring this out would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Dixon9717]

The cloudiness is probably just protein haze a week in the fridge and it should clear up. If your caps weren't sealed properly that would explain the flatness

 

[Craigmn]

Sometimes higher gravity beers take longer to carb, but it seems it should have something by now

 

[Davidm714]

Thanks for the reply. The caps seem to have sealed properly because after the one I put in the fridge came out cloudy and flat I popped another one at room temp and it was perfectly carbed. I put another one in the freezer just long enough to chill it to about 50° which seems to be preferred serving temp for the style and the bubbles seemed to want to stay in suspension. It's weird, it's like the beer is almost too thick to allow the bubbles to escape

 

[Davidm714]

Thanks for the reply. The caps seem to have sealed properly because after the one I put in the fridge came out cloudy and flat I popped another one at room temp and it was perfectly carbed. I put another one in the freezer just long enough to chill it to about 50° which seems to be preferred serving temp for the style and the bubbles seemed to want to stay in suspension. It's weird, it's like the beer is almost too thick to allow the bubbles to escape

 

[Davidm714]

Thanks for the reply. The caps seem to have sealed properly because after the one I put in the fridge came out cloudy and flat I popped another one at room temp and it was perfectly carbed. I put another one in the freezer just long enough to chill it to about 50° which seems to be preferred serving temp for the style and the bubbles seemed to want to stay in suspension. It's weird, it's like the beer is almost too thick to allow the bubbles to escape

 

[Davidm714]

Oops, sorry for the multi post. Got confused

 

[Davidm714]

Bump. Any other ideas as to what my problem could be? I did use flaked oats in the mash could that have something to do with it perhaps?

 

[DrunkleJon]

Flatness when cold is undercarbonation. When cold the CO2 stays in suspension better than warm. This is why you get little to no bubbles when it is cold, but more when warm. It could be due to a few things. Leaky caps, incomplete fermentation of the priming sugar (high abv could have killed off the yeast, did you pitch some fresh yeast? the stuff that was in the beer was probably stressed/exhausted), underpriming, or inconsistent priming where you have somehow grabbed and chilled the ones that were primed more and chilling the ones with less priming sugar.

The haziness is most likely, as mentioned above, protein/chill haze. More time in cold storage will allow it to settle out and clear up. Haze never killed anyone or made beer taste bad so dont worry about that.

I would say for the beer, you can give it more time to carbonate (maybe stir up the sediment from the bottom of the bottle) and warm slightly to see if you can get the yeast working again. Or just drink it at cellar temperatures. Being a 10%ish beer you probably arent going to be slamming them or drinking them nightly so you should be able to let some sit while one or two is in your fridge for clearing up. As always the last few are going to be the best.

You also could chill the bottles, pop the lids and add a little fresh dry yeast into each bottle, then again you would release some pressure and could not guarantee that you would get more carbonation out of it.

 

[hopkincr]

I've had the same problem before with other beers. Only has happened with me when I've used Knox to help clarify. Mine never really carbed up, even after adding a little more yeast. One work around is if I put the beer in the freezer for 30 mins to chill, they all had plenty of carbonation. If I took them out of freezer and moved to fridge overnight, then they were flat next day.

 

[Davidm714]

No I didn't re yeast prior to bottling, in hindsight I wish I had. This is the biggest beer I've ever brewed and I didn't figure the yeast would get over worked. So lesson learned there. I've read in other threads that bigger beers take upwards of 4-6 months to carb up fully so as of now I'm not going to rush into trying to quick fix it. I swirled all the bottles and moved them to a warmer spot in the house. I'll try to forget about them for a few months and try again. I put one in the fridge to see how long it takes the chill haze to clear. This is the worst chill haze I've ever had. It's a murky mess. But albeit the beer tastes great, I'm really hoping it finds it's way. Thanks for yall's help!

 

[DrunkleJon]

Sounds like you are doing what needs to be done. Dont leave us hanging and let us know how it turns out.

 

[Davidm714]

I had a bottle in the fridge for several weeks and the haze didn't clear up at all. So I chilled all the bottles and carefully poured all of them into my bottling bucket and then racked into a keg (purged with co2 of course) and hit it with some gelatin. I put it on 28 psi and let it go for a few days and I'm happy to report that now it's crystal clear, has a beautiful fluffy head, and tastes great!!