Understanding priming error

[moze229]

I'm not sure what happened, folks. I'm not perfect, but I usually can't screw up bottle priming. I added 4.5oz of corn sugar to a 4.5 gallon batch (after racking and sampling over 3 weeks) to the bottling bucket before bottling my nut brown ale at the beginning of Dec. Stirred carefully but well. I'm using 16 oz. flip tops with new silicone seals. Cages are not loose. Some are even sorta hard to close - LOL.

Anyhoo, about half of the bottles (about 13 of them) are completely flat. The other half tasted great and were carbonated just fine. I was thinking infection maybe, but that tends to cause the opposite effect according to what I've been reading. This isn't about trying to figure out what mechanical issue occurred (cages not tight enough, bad seal, whatever) - I don't care anymore. I'm not using these bottles. The cheap brown bottles with bottle caps is the way to go.

My question is - should I try adding some more sugar to each bottle that was flat, then letting it sit at room temp again? Will it recarb now that I've opened them? (I just popped the top - if I don't get a 'pop', I stop. - Wow - that sounded kinda cool. LOL) I suppose I don't have anything to loose. What do you all think?

 

[billl]

I think you are probably right - just a bad seal on the flip tops. You can add can more sugar and reseal and you should be fine. Of course, unless you know why the seal failed the first time, its kinda hard to know if it is going to seal nicely the second time.

 

[PatrickGoss]

I have done exactly what you are thinking about with old grolsh bottles. I added some keg lube to improve the seal. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. A couple bottles developed an off flavor. This could be from the corn sugar that had not been boiled.

 

[jrgtr42]

Did you dissolve / boil the sugar before adding to your bottling bucket? or just add it dry?
If dry, you may not have gotten full mixture into the beer, so some bottles were underprimed versus others.

 

[moze229]

Did you dissolve / boil the sugar before adding to your bottling bucket? or just add it dry?
If dry, you may not have gotten full mixture into the beer, so some bottles were underprimed versus others.

I used corn sugar. I boiled the mix, added it to the bottling bucket, and racked the beer on top of the mix.

Out of the 28, sixteen oz bottles I bottled, 18 of them were pretty much flat. The others were decent. I had a couple that were funky tasting, but that's another problem.

Anyway, I finally took the bottles back out of the fridge to let them warm back to room temperature. When I opened each and every one to add the additional priming sugar, they all fizzed. So, when they are cold, no fizz. When they are room temp - fizz. This likely has to do with CO2 dissolving is cold liquids for readily than warm. My thinking is that I still need to add more sugar because while the fizz is there, it's just not enough to stay in the beer when cold. This also means that I don't have a sealing issue.

Should I still add the additional priming sugar? I don't want bombs.