Still flat

[TIM-MAY]

after 3 weeks in the bottle there is very little carbination. Should i let it go another week or try and recarb? Its a BB extract kit and i followed the directions given. Beer tastes ok just flat.
Thanks

 

[bransona]

What sort of beer is it? What's the OG? What yeast? Did you use priming sugar tabs?

Those details may help

 

[TIM-MAY]

Brewers best scottish ale. OG was 1.033-034. Fermentation did appear a bit weak. Didnt see any more bubbling after 4 days. I let it sit in primary for 2 days short of 3 weeks before bottling. Kit came with bag of dextrose. Mixed 3oz in boiling water per instructions. Do not know/remember what yeast was in the kit. Instructions just say 1 yeast packet.

 

[bransona]

Sounds like a normal fermentation for that small of a beer. Did you cold crash before bottling? Did you stir the sugar water into your beer before bottling?

 

[TIM-MAY]

Did not cold crash. I stirred with a paddle for a short time. 1-2 minutes i think

 

[bransona]

Sounds like you did everything fine. What temp are you storing the bottles at while they carb?

 

[TIM-MAY]

64-67.

 

[bransona]

I'd give it another week or two and try again. After that, idk what to tell you. Maybe someone else can chip in since I'm out of ideas, lol

 

[RM-MN]

Warm up your beer. It will carb at 65 but it takes a long time relative to what it takes at 75. I just sampled a pale ale that had only been bottled 4 days and it had decent carbonation already. It also had a bad yeast bite so don't sample yours too soon.

 

[UncleAvis]

I bottle condition in the low middle 60's, because that is what is available to me this time of year. I find 4-5 weeks and another 1 in the fridge is what it takes to get good carb. Your options? Warm it up as rm-mn said (3 weeks @ 70 is conventional wisdom), or build up your pipeline so it doesn't matter. I'm usually 2-2.5months grain to glass.

 

[CavAv8tr]

I bottled a Winter Ale (Midwest Supplies) 2 weeks ago. This is my fourth batch. After two weeks I probably screwed up by putting the beer in the Fridge without testing a bottle for carbonation. Been in the Fridge two days. Can I still pull it out and let it sit another week or two or will run the chance of skunking it? It is almost completely flat right now. Added the priming solution (5oz of sugar/2 cups H20) in the bottom of the bucket added the wort and stirred just to be sure. Conditioned at 68 degrees (house temp).

Thanks in advance.

 

[UncleAvis]

I think your fine to pull them out. I would leave 1 or 2 in to try in a few days. Testing carb before cooling won't tell you what you want to know. It takes lower temps to force the co2 into your beer for full carb. If you open it warm you lose most of the co2 out of the headspace.

 

[beerlover77]

I bottled a Winter Ale (Midwest Supplies) 2 weeks ago. This is my fourth batch. After two weeks I probably screwed up by putting the beer in the Fridge without testing a bottle for carbonation. Been in the Fridge two days. Can I still pull it out and let it sit another week or two or will run the chance of skunking it? It is almost completely flat right now. Added the priming solution (5oz of sugar/2 cups H20) in the bottom of the bucket added the wort and stirred just to be sure. Conditioned at 68 degrees (house temp).

Thanks in advance.

You can take it from the fridge and warm it up. The yeast will still carbonate the beer

 

[bransona]

I bottled a Winter Ale (Midwest Supplies) 2 weeks ago. This is my fourth batch. After two weeks I probably screwed up by putting the beer in the Fridge without testing a bottle for carbonation. Been in the Fridge two days. Can I still pull it out and let it sit another week or two or will run the chance of skunking it? It is almost completely flat right now. Added the priming solution (5oz of sugar/2 cups H20) in the bottom of the bucket added the wort and stirred just to be sure. Conditioned at 68 degrees (house temp).

Thanks in advance.

Pull it back out and condition as normal. No harm done.

 

[CavAv8tr]

Thanks guys. Guess I will try another week, then chill a couple and see what happens.

CavAv8tr.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

If its flip top bottles, they can leak. You have to change the gaskets every batch to be reasonably sure they will prime.

 

[CavAv8tr]

It's regular capped bottles.

 

[RM-MN]

I bottled a Winter Ale (Midwest Supplies) 2 weeks ago. This is my fourth batch. After two weeks I probably screwed up by putting the beer in the Fridge without testing a bottle for carbonation. Been in the Fridge two days. Can I still pull it out and let it sit another week or two or will run the chance of skunking it? It is almost completely flat right now. Added the priming solution (5oz of sugar/2 cups H20) in the bottom of the bucket added the wort and stirred just to be sure. Conditioned at 68 degrees (house temp).

Thanks in advance.

Skunking your beer will take UV light. Keep it out of the sunlight and it will be fine. Brown bottles block a lot of UV too so that helps. Any other colors do not.

 

[beerlover77]

If its flip top bottles, they can leak. You have to change the gaskets every batch to be reasonably sure they will prime.

This isn't true. Those gaskets last a long time as long as you take care of them and I know from experience.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/grolsch-gasket-replacement-how-often.519595/

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

This isn't true. Those gaskets last a long time as long as you take care of them and I know from experience.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/grolsch-gasket-replacement-how-often.519595/

I have had the opposite experience. My first use, EZ-Cap bottles were fine, second use had a couple of duds, third use every bottle leaked.

 

[beerlover77]

I have had the opposite experience. My first use, EZ-Cap bottles were fine, second use had a couple of duds, third use every bottle leaked.

Maybe you got a bad batch of them?

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

@beerlover77 Here is a video that I have seen in my crusade to get the word the guy doing the testing isn’t me.

 

[beerlover77]

@beerlover77 Here is a video that I have seen in my crusade to get the word the guy doing the testing isn’t me.

Thanks for sharing that!

I wonder if it is the bottle itself
(find it weird that the leak is coming from the top of the gasket in the vid). Now that I think about it, I had some genaric swingtops given to me and a few of them leaked because the cage wasn't as tight as it should have been. Disposed of those bottles and never looked back. All my Grolsch bottles have been top-notch and never had a leak from one of them.

Either way the gaskets are cheap in bulk!

 

[ncbrewer]

Mixed 3oz in boiling water per instructions.

If this is 5 gallons in the bottling bucket, the Brewers Friend calculator shows 1.9 volumes (using 68F). That's really low. You can solve the time and temperature issues, but it might never get to a carb level that you want. Note: My guesses of volume and temperature could be wrong.

 

[jalc6927]

The chances of every bottle leaking is pretty slim, more than likely they were not primed correctly

5oz of priming sugar per 5 gallons of beer is normal

 

[Kee]

Beer tastes ok just flat.
Thanks

If you had any unfermented priming sugar left, the beer would be cloyingly sweet.

 

[mirthfuldragon]

Move them some place warm, tip them upside down and give them a swirl, and then check back in 7 or 10 days. Sometimes you just need to rouse the yeast a bit.

 

[TIM-MAY]

Update. Been a couple weeks since i posted. Beer now has some carb but still not all the way there. I couldnt move it to a warmer spot without risking constant changing temps. Gonna give it another week ir so. Thanks for the replies

 

[stosh]

Just throwing this out there and don't know if anyone posted this idea but...

I had a red ale that didn't carb up for almost 5 weeks. I had the bottles stored in a wine grape crate and decided to put a heating pad under the crate and covered the crate with a bath towel. They all carbed up in less than a week