mookow
03-09-2006, 09:24 PM
My first few brews carbonated just fine. My last couple to be bottled are either taking a lot longer than they should have to carbonate fully, or I'm screwing up something.
My raspberry hefeweizen was primed with 2.4oz of corn sugar, which for the batch size (1.75 gallons) Promash said would give me 4.1 volumes of CO2. Three weeks later, I open a bottle, and it's just barely carbonated. And aggressive pour gave me maybe an inch of foam in a proper hefeweizen glass, and it was of the large bubbles that dont last very long. This batch, however, did sit in secondary on top of the fruit for at least 2.5 months, using #3068 yeast. So it is possible that I was low on viable yeast getting into the bottle, and thus it may take another couple weeks to carbonate. I dont know.
My vanilla stout should have carbonated to 2.4 volumes of CO2 according to Promash. Three weeks after bottling, it's still not well carbonated. Tasty, but it could use some more carbonation. This one also sat for a couple of months prior to bottling, but I had repitched more yeast (#1099) within a week prior to bottling, so I should have had plenty of viable yeast to work with.
Now, I generally fill the 12oz bottles to within 1.5" of the top of the bottle. The larger size bottles get just a bit more headspace volume. The priming sugar used is corn sugar, and I usually boil it in about 10oz of water. I tend to boil it for ~5 minutes, then simmer it with a lid on top of the pan (to sanitize the lid via heat) for another 5-10 minutes. I then stick the pan into some ice water, wait for it to get around room temp, then I funnel it into the bottling carboy. I then siphon from my secondary into the carboy containing the sugar water, and I try to get the hose to swirl the outgoing beer into the fermenter to better mix the sugar into solution with the beer. However, I dont think mixing the sugar into solution is the problem, because if it was one of the bottles of raspberry hefe should have exploded by now.
The IIPA I just opened, OTOH, has a two inch head on it when poured less aggressively and was bottled more recently than the other two beers. Also, it is higher alcohol (8.5%ABV vs <4.5% for the other two beers). Same procedures were used for all three beers.
My raspberry hefeweizen was primed with 2.4oz of corn sugar, which for the batch size (1.75 gallons) Promash said would give me 4.1 volumes of CO2. Three weeks later, I open a bottle, and it's just barely carbonated. And aggressive pour gave me maybe an inch of foam in a proper hefeweizen glass, and it was of the large bubbles that dont last very long. This batch, however, did sit in secondary on top of the fruit for at least 2.5 months, using #3068 yeast. So it is possible that I was low on viable yeast getting into the bottle, and thus it may take another couple weeks to carbonate. I dont know.
My vanilla stout should have carbonated to 2.4 volumes of CO2 according to Promash. Three weeks after bottling, it's still not well carbonated. Tasty, but it could use some more carbonation. This one also sat for a couple of months prior to bottling, but I had repitched more yeast (#1099) within a week prior to bottling, so I should have had plenty of viable yeast to work with.
Now, I generally fill the 12oz bottles to within 1.5" of the top of the bottle. The larger size bottles get just a bit more headspace volume. The priming sugar used is corn sugar, and I usually boil it in about 10oz of water. I tend to boil it for ~5 minutes, then simmer it with a lid on top of the pan (to sanitize the lid via heat) for another 5-10 minutes. I then stick the pan into some ice water, wait for it to get around room temp, then I funnel it into the bottling carboy. I then siphon from my secondary into the carboy containing the sugar water, and I try to get the hose to swirl the outgoing beer into the fermenter to better mix the sugar into solution with the beer. However, I dont think mixing the sugar into solution is the problem, because if it was one of the bottles of raspberry hefe should have exploded by now.
The IIPA I just opened, OTOH, has a two inch head on it when poured less aggressively and was bottled more recently than the other two beers. Also, it is higher alcohol (8.5%ABV vs <4.5% for the other two beers). Same procedures were used for all three beers.