Natural Carbonation Bottling issues

[Mike Newman]

Hello! I just began homebrewing in January so I am brand new at this. My first batch was the Plinian IIPA one gallon small batch kit from northern brewer, and it turned out really good! Since then I have become hooked on homebrewing, reading books and blogs everyday.

I bought a 5 gallon True Brew IPA kit and was going to disperse the ingredients into 4- 1.25gal batches. I have attached the ingredient list and recipe. Where I’m running into issues is carbonation... after 2 weeks I tasted one and it was quite flat. So I put them in a warmer area and shook each bottle to put more yeast back in suspension. After another 5 days it seems to still be in the same condition.

Did I not pitch enough yeast? Should I uncap the bottles and add a little yeast to each bottle, or just wait another week? PLEASE HELP! View attachment 558286

 

[flars]

It is nearly impossible to not get natural carbonation in the bottle from the lack of yeast.
Need some more information:
How much priming sugar did you use? What was the original gravity of the beer?
High OG beers take longer to carbonate than low OG beers.
https://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/

I won't sample a beer for three weeks after bottling if the OG was about 1.052 or lower, and conditioning at at least 70°F. Higher OG beers four to eight weeks.

 

[MaxStout]

Even after you rack off the trub, there are still billions of yeast cells floating around in your beer. Lack of yeast isn't the problem. Adding the right amount of sugar and giving the beer time to carb is important. As flars stated, a good 3 weeks for lower gravity beers, and much longer of bigger beers. Keep it at temps around 70F. Give it time.

 

[troglodytes]

Welcome to brewing!

You should not ever really need to add more yeast. Even if a beer is clear looking there is plenty in suspension to get the job done. Just because you didn't list it as part of your ingredients list, I have to ask...you did add priming sugar post fermentation and prior to bottling, correct? If so, you will be fine eventually. I've had plenty of batches take a while to carb up.

Since you only did a 1 gallon batch I would hate to keep cracking bottles only to find them uncarbonated, so I would wait another two weeks before trying again. That's not long enough for your hops to really fade much and the beer will probably have come together a little better at that point anyway.

Edit: Looking through your recipe, it seems you probably had a starting gravity of about 1.070. While not a huge beer, it will probably finish close to 7% abv. This might take a little longer to carb up as higher gravity brews often do. My quad at 12% avb took at least 6 weeks before it was carbed up. Your's won't take that long, but 2 weeks probably isn't enough time.

 

[Mike Newman]

I used the leftover sugar tabs I got from northern brewer. However I’m learning that those things kinda suck from what I read online. Next batch I will use priming sugar that came with the kit

 

[Mike Newman]

My OG was about 1.060 for reference