Beer never carbonates completely

[msolem]

I've made about 5 or 6 batches of beer, and none of them reached a decent level of carbonation. There is some though, and the beer is quite good. They also have a sweet taste which to me tastes like unfermented malt. I bottle the beer (5 gallons) with 1.25 to cups of DME (sometimes a little more). I've mostly used Wyeast 1056 american ale yeast. The bottles are stored at around 68 degrees. Is that too low? I've waited for months on various batches, and they all suffer from this problem.

Mike

[Tweek]

Is the sweet taste you are referring to happening before or after you bottle? If after than obviously you arent gettting all the dme eaten up by the yeast. If before than that is another thing altogether. 68 is a tad low but not so low that it shouldnt be doing its job.if like you say you are waiting months and still no only slight results, my guess is that you need to add more primer for your taste. If you are getting carbonation that means the yeast is working it probabally just ran out of food before it got to the level that you want. DME is not 100% fermentable, so you are going to add a slight sweetness to your beer by using it and Ive noticed for me I have a harder time hitting my carbonation levels that I want. Then again I have only tried it a couple times. You might want to try a batch using corn sugar as your primer, about 3/4 cup for a 5 gallon batch is what I use for most of my pales.

[Fast_Eddy]

I agree with Tweek - try using some corn sugar and juxtapose the carbonation between a dme batch and the corn sugar batch.

The ideal ferm temp of 1056 is 68 F so the temp shouldn't be a problem.