pouring BW from bottles to keg?

[SATXbrew]

So my brother and I bottled a 11% barley wine in some flip top bottles about a month ago. Pitched some us-05 and some sugar to bottling bucket and its still totally flat. I know best course of action is to wait but we want these ready for Xmas. His idea is to just pour them in to the keg. I just don't feel that's a good idea but suppose it could work. I'm considering putting carb tabs in each bottle. Thoughts??

 

[nukebrewer]

High ABV brews tend to take a while to carbonate, much longer than normal gravity brews. I wouldn't pour the bottles into the keg, that's just asking for trouble. A well aged BW has some oxidation, but pouring would introduce way too much oxygen. I think you should just take this as a lesson learned and schedule your bottling more appropriately next time or just plan on kegging in the first place.

 

[SATXbrew]

I think the frustrating part is that the BW we did last year carbed up within a few weeks and that's making us impatient. I hate to make any rash decisions on a year old beer..

 

[nukebrewer]

Yeah, it's frustrating when things don't go to plan. You've still got about 10 days for it carb before Christmas, so best of luck on that.

 

[TNGabe]

You already primed the beer, so tabs aren't going to help. That would just lead to overcarbed beer whenever it does carb up. Is the beer warm enough? Some have suggested rolling the bottles to rouse the yeast, that has never made sense to me. Even if you do pour the beer into a keg, it will still have the unfermented priming sugar in it and be overly sweet. Waiting, and maybe buying some beer for xmas, is your best bet.

 

[Cyclman]

If you want a few to carb for celebrations, get 'em into the high 70s, that'll be your best chance for them to carb.

I have a huge Pumpkin I made for Haloween, still barely carbed.

 

[Grannyknot]

I had a 9% dipa take 8 weeks to properly carbonate a while back. The thing that helped them the most was putting them in a box on top of the fridge. Seemed to be pretty warm up there.

 

[SATXbrew]

Thanks for all the feedback!

 

[SATXbrew]

OK guys. Update on this. Just popped open a bottle and nothing.. so it has been several months now and I know that some of you said it took almost a year to carbonate. Do I still need to just be patient or is this a lost cause? The beer tastes pretty good but it is completely flat. What should i do differently next time to avoid this from happening again? Last time we used a medicine dropper an added used directly to each bottle and it carbonated within a few weeks. Do you think that the method has anything to do with it? Should we try to rehydrate the yeast or something next time? Thanks for the input!