My bottled beer is flat. Is it too late to add a pinch of sugar to each bottle to carbonate them?

[dogflap]

Hi guys.

I brewed my beer in a primary fermentation tub for 10 days before transferring to a pressure keg for 2 weeks, as per the instructions.

I prefer my beers bottled, and so using a bottling wand, I bottled about 20 beers from the pressure keg to keep in the fridge.

Cracked one open last night and it's completely flat. I think that maybe the pressure keg wasn't sealed properly.

My question is this: can I add a pinch of sugar to each of the bottles and leave them for another couple of weeks to get them carbonated? What would be the best method to go about this? And is there anything else I need to add?

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Pkrd]

If it's completely flat then you can just drop in some sugar and recap. Leave somewhere warm for two weeks. See the calculator below, or you can get some carb drops from your local homebrew shop.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/

 

[dogflap]

If it's completely flat then you can just drop in some sugar and recap. Leave somewhere warm for two weeks. See the calculator below, or you can get some carb drops from your local homebrew shop.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/

Great, thanks so much for your help!

 

[ncbrewer]

Even if it tastes flat, you have some carbonation. The priming calculators estimate how much carbonation is in the beer coming out of the fermenter, based on temperature. Since yours is pressurized, you should have more carbonation than at atmospheric pressure for your temperature, but apparently it's not as much as it should be. IMO, you have some unknown amount of carbonation - probably some extra due to some pressure in the fermenter. To be on the safe side, I wouldn't add sugar. Flat beer is better than bottle bombs.

 

[Transamguy77]

Even if it tastes flat, you have some carbonation. The priming calculators estimate how much carbonation is in the beer coming out of the fermenter, based on temperature. Since yours is pressurized, you should have more carbonation than at atmospheric pressure for your temperature, but apparently it's not as much as it should be. IMO, you have some unknown amount of carbonation - probably some extra due to some pressure in the fermenter. To be on the safe side, I wouldn't add sugar. Flat beer is better than bottle bombs.

Unless the keg had a leak and didn’t carb the beer, OP was the beer carbonated when you bottled it? If it was carbed when you bottled it and now it’s flat was the keg of beer cold? If not then as the beer got cold it absorbed more of the Co2 and now pours flat.