Munton's CarbTabs Are Horrible - DO NOT EVER BUY THEM! (a fellow home brewer's rant)

[mthelm85]

1 month in the bottle and I still have little white flakes floating around in my tripel. The bottles that didn't get the tabs (unfortunately there were only 2) are crystal clear. All of you are blaming my brewing process are just ridiculous. The little white flakes floating around in my beer are obviously from the carbtabs. As I've already said numerous times, just Google munton's carbtabs + floaties or chunks, etc. and you'll see this has happened to many people. The chunks did get smaller as the days, weeks went on but they haven't changed in size now for a couple of weeks so I think they are going to be a permanent feature in my tripel. I can't emphasize enough how horrible this product is.

On the bright side, the beer turned out really good. Next time around I'm going to try and squeeze more esters and phenolics out of the yeast because it's just a tad bit lacking for my liking.

 

[truebe]

I'm thinking about getting these to make a couple bombers when I keg. I'm sure they'll be serviceable as long as I dont make a mysterious screwup with priming sugar and then try to add the tabs on top of it. I'm just wondering if its just as easy to measure out the sugar for each bottle and save a long trip to the homebrew store.

 

[ron,ar]

I have used them several times in extract brews with good success, they just take longer.
I don't use Muntons yeast tho, even in an extract, as I generally add DME and their yeast just doesn't handle the extra fermentables as well as other yeast...even as well as Coopers.
I have used lots of Muntons products over the years, a little higher than some brands but they do have a good product line. I'll put their DME up against anybodys.
As far as googling anything and seeing how many negative posts there are......a person is 5 times more likely to report a bad experiance with a product than post any comment if it simply performed as advertised. Remember this old news axiom..."it's bad news that makes news"...

 

[RidingDonkeys]

I've had a spiced winter ale carbed with Munton's in the bottles for four weeks now. I popped my first at 3 weeks...and got nothing. There was bottle pressure, but no carbonation of any sort to note in the beer.

I just popped another at 4 weeks, after creating a slight increase in temperature. Still nothing. Flat as can be. I'm not impressed with these at all.

I've used Brewer's Best tabs before successfully, with about a 3 week prime. But nothing using Munton's after 4 weeks. Unacceptable.

 

[JonM]

Did you use 4 tablets for "normal carbonation" like the instructions say?

 

[Ogri]

I used them while bottling and it worked just fine.

I also used them, like the OP did, to try and rescue some under carbed beer. That didn't work. At all. (In fact, as I wrote this, I'm having some BBQ beef that I cooked in the flat beer.)

Maybe it's the trying-to-rescue a beer that's the problem?

Could be.

Possibly the yeast had already crapped out or the ABV was already too high, creating an environment that made it difficult for the yeast to efficiently complete the task of fully converting the tabs.

 

[RidingDonkeys]

Did you use 4 tablets for "normal carbonation" like the instructions say?

Actually, I used 5 tabs for high carbonation as per instructions.

 

[+HopSpunge+]

I have bought a bad bag of the muton's carb tabs before. Luckly I was only trying to carb 4 beers from a batch. Same deal, would not carb with little white pieces floating in the necks. They probably go bad after sitting on the shelf for a couple years. No biggie, made a killer beer bread.

 

[aubiecat]

I have used them twice with good results both times.

 

[Satisfaction]

When I first started kegging my beers I bought a package of these as well since I always have 1/2 gallon or so left over. Unfortunately I had the same experience and the white floaters never went away.

Now I just use very small scoops of priming sugar per bottle and deal with the small variability of carbonation. That is more tolerable than white floaters which most people would associate as contamination.