my Christmas ale barely carbonated

[jigidyjim]

I'm 0 for 2 for delivering good xmas ales - last years was a weird recipe, and this year's didn't carbonate. This year's was a DFH 90 min IPA clone. Unfortunately, I did several things differently this brew, so I don't know what the problem was. Any advice?

* First high alcohol brew - 9.2%.
* First time cold crashing before bottling.
* First time using DME to prime (I was out of corn sugar and luckily had DME on hand). I used 233g of DME, and ended up with 40 bottles (I was way under 5 gal for this batch due to amount of trub, blow off, and dry hop absorption).


Some other info:
* Bottled Nov 14th.
* Spent 2 weeks in temp controlled 70 degrees.
* Spent the other ~4 weeks in the house (probably average of 65 degrees).

There's a small hiss when opening the bottles, so something happened, but definitely not much, and no where even close to anything considered non-flat.

I'm gunna hold on to the bottles for awhile and see if waiting helps, but after 6 weeks, I wonder how much more could happen?

 

[dave5155]

High alcohol beers can take months to carbonate. DO NOT DUMP IT. They will carbonate with time.

 

[WyomingBrewer]

Drink them next Christmas, IF YOU CAN! There is no way I could leave a beer alone that long, and then if it happens to be good, even in July, Its a goner! Good luck!

 

[postban]

Put it back where it was 70 and leave it there, it will come up.
My basement is 64-66 and my main level is 68-70, distinct difference in conditioning time I find.

 

[jigidyjim]

Thanks everyone, I'll put it aside for a few months and try again. i can't get it up to 70 again - I did that in my fridge (with a fermtemp heater plugged in), but right now my fridge is being used for lagering... (which is why I took the beer out in the first place).

I won't have a problem waiting on it, i'm not really enjoying the super flat taste. the flavor is very dominating, so carbonation will help make it more drinkable i think.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

The combination of cold crashing and high alcohol gives you a small number of cells to work through a rough condition. That's going to slow down carbonation. Add to that you used DME. DME takes longer to break down and consume than corn sugar.

I think your beer will turn out just fine, you will just need to give it time.