Not sure if yeast is the right place to post! I'm looking for some advice on my under carbed bottles. The nitty-gritty:
-Vanilla Porter, in secondary for 9 months
-around 10% abv, maybe slightly higher due to addition of bourbon to the secondary
-bottled 3 weeks ago with ~2.5 - 3 oz of priming sugar (3.5 gallons), also added a little champagne yeast to goose the process
The beer is woefully under-carbed. There's a little tickle there, but not much. The flavor is pretty tight, so I'd love suggestions on how to salvage it. I'm not sure if the issue is not enough yeast in suspension, not enough sugar, or not enough patience on my part.
That should be plenty of sugar and time to carb right up. Try putting a bottle in some place that is warmer in the house and see if that one carbs up. If it does, you know it's the temperature. You can put the rest of the bottles in that spot with good air flow. If it still doesn't carb, you do have sugar added already, so try rehydrating some more dry yeast (any yeast will do) and adding a little to each bottle, recapping, and inverting a few times and put it back in that warm place.
Thanks Mark! I'll give it a go and update in a few weeks.
My experience is that high abv beers can take quite a bit longer to bottle condition, even if you add more yeast. That much alcohol and the yeast, even if they are working, are sleepy drunk little bastards, lazily going about their business. More time has solved the problem.
www.singingboysbrewing.com
It took almost two months for my batch of the barrel aged barlywine to carb. (I added dry yeast.) For the barrel aged Scotch ale, we found that placing those next to a vent (with hot air) got the carbonation going.
Sounds like I just need to be more patient and warm those guys up.
Jeff, since your hot air vent seems to be the ideal location, is there any chance I could store the bottles near your mouth? :-)
Ouch!
Ha! Warning: Storing bottles near Jeff's mouth may result in a dcrease of beer volume.
This forum needs an "lol" button on each post similar to twitter's favorite and facebook's like buttons. ;)
5 oz sugar (3/4) cup has never failed.