Uneven carbonation! Help!

[Teacher]

About three weeks ago I bottled up a stout. Even though I knew it wouldn't really be ready, I had a couple last weekend and they were pretty good. They were fully carbed and had nice, dense heads. Last night I had two more...zip. There was a very slight hiss when I opened the bottles, but there was so little carbonation that the "head" was only a very slight, partial film. What gives? I've heard of carbonation taking several weeks, but I've never heard of it being uneven. For the record, here is some info:

1. All bottling was done at the exact same time.

2. I was fanatical about sanitizing. I used a no-rinse, allowed the bottles to dry on my table, dumped the extra drops out just before bottling, sanitized the caps and capper, wore rubber gloves that were also sanitized right up until I actually filled the bottles, and never touched any bottle lips or caps with my bare fingers.

3. All bottles were filled to the same level (about 1" from the top).

4. The suger was boiled and then cooled, then added to the bottling bucket before racking in the beer.

5. All bottles were stored in the same place...in fact, these bottles were all sitting next to each other in the same 12-pack box. There are no heat sources anywhere near them.

6. All were refrigerated for about two days before opening.

I'm stumped. What do you guys recommend? Sure I can wait it out, but I'm seriously puzzled by the unevenness of it all.

 

[powerjb]

I've had some bottles that just don't seal as well, Negro Modello bottles are terrible... Could be a couple poor seals.

 

[devaspawn]

You may be stuck with uneven carbonation. Time will tell. I do the same thing as far as bottling minus the gloves. The thing I do really different though is I stir the beer after filling every 6 to 12 bottles. The sugar water is denser than the rest of the beer and is likely to start settling to the bottom. Haven't had an unevenly carbed bottle yet.

My only other guess is that a few of your caps didn't crimp completely and you had a slight carb leak...

 

[AnonyBrew]

I see 2 possibilities with my limited experience.

1. The priming solution was not adequately stirred to thoroughly mix into the beer while bottling. I stir the beer 3 or 4 times while bottling to ensure a good mix.

2. Somehow the sanitizer affected your caps. I read somewhere on HBT in another thread that it's ok to use caps right from the bag and that there are some type of caps that can be damaged by sanitizer. However, I have no experience with caps, I use the swingtops. (If this is incorrect I'm sure I'll be swiftly corrected.)

 

[Teacher]

I never thought about stirring the bottling bucket, and now I'll definitely do that. It's funny, though, that this dense brew might have had that problem, and I haven't had the problem with slightly less dense ones. Oh, well...a lesson learned. I'll also stop sanitizing the caps.

 

[devaspawn]

SB, you are right about the caps. Some caps have an air-thingy (technical term) that is activated with moisture. No problem once the beers been capped but ruined if you sanitize them. I just get the regular caps and sanitize them and haven't had a problem yet.

 

[devaspawn]

Do a gentle stir. Maybe four or five revolutions.

 

[Revvy]

I've had stouts and porters take longer to all come up to speed. Since we're dealing with living yeasties, they won't necessarily all carb at exactly the same time...any number of normal things could come into play, one side of a case of bottles could be closer to a heat source and maybe carb up a little faster ( a couple of degrees DOES matter) or there were a few more yeasties in the bottles filled first, so it will take the ones with fewer cells a little longer.

It's not like a lightswitch where they all flip on at once.

Plus I have had stouts and porters take anywhere from 4-8 weeks before they all came up to snuff.

Rather than suggesting there's anything wrong, I'm betting on the fact that yeasts are living creatures, and being such have their own agenda, that often is different from ours.

Roll the bottles on their sides back and forth a couple times to re-rouse any yeast, and leave them in your warm space for a couple more weeks...Betch they will ALL be carbed by then.

 

[rollinred]

I actually know the solution to you problem. Even though I can be considred a newbie, I ran into this with my first couple of beer. first off you must put the priming solution into a bottling bucket first, this way you can stick the siphon tube from your secondary into somthing so that it doesnt spash into air during siphon. That will at least start you off in the sanitary direction, along with starting the mixing of priming solution and fermented brew.

But the point I wanted to mention the most is to take whatever rig you have the beer in (ie. primary or secondary) and pour in the priming solution that is mix of boiled water and corn sugar. As I am sure you have done.

I however have noticed that this process makes much much much better carbonation if you let it sit for 12 hours before bottling or kegging. The fermentation will start again, and you will see bubbles, but it wont go for long enough to get rid of the priming sugar or stop carbonation. I suggest waking up before work one day a couple hours early and making your carbing solution and siphoning onto it. That way when you come home from work the fermentation has basically just started again, and the beer and solution has mixed to its fullest potential. I did exactly this on my last beer and its carbonation was the best I have had yet.