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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
  Re: Flat Beer (Joel Wilson)
  flat beer ("Darrell G. Leavitt")
  Re: Flat Beer (Fred L Johnson)
  Re: Flat Beer (Glyn and Mary)
  Re: Flat beer (stencil)
  RE: Flat beer ("Mike Patient")
  RE: Flat Beer (Josh Knarr)
  RE: Flat Beer ("RJ")


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Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 14:07:40 +1000
From: Joel Wilson <450shakey at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Flat Beer

Tom,

I have heard that overheating caps can compromise the seals and that  
they should not be sanitized by boiling.
I am not sure if this is your problem, and it may be a brand specific  
issue, but might be worth looking into.

If the swing tops come out ok then that would be further evidence  
pointing to the caps also.

Cheers,
Joel


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Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 06:27:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Darrell G. Leavitt" <leavitdg at plattsburgh.edu>
Subject: flat beer

I would add a bit more corn sugar for bottling, then make sure that you do
siphon just a touch of yeast off of the bottom when trnasferring into the
bottling bucket.  This may help.

You haven't said what the temperature was after bottling, and this may be
an issue too.

Let us all know the results.

Darrell



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Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 07:38:03 -0400
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Re: Flat Beer

Tom has two beers that haven't carbonated in the bottle after several  
weeks.

It sounds like you just proved to yourself (and again to me) that some  
things you read in the homebrewing literature or hear in homebrewing  
forums aren't universally true. In this case it is the idea that there  
are ALWAYS plenty of yeast in suspension to bottle condition the beer.

The IPA that has been in the bottle for six weeks probably needs some  
fresh yeast.  I'm not so sure about the Belgian Dubbel. You might want  
to wait another week on this one as it sounds like some carbonation is  
being produced. (I'm assuming you are keeping these bottles at a  
temperature of least 65 degrees F.)

It wasn't clear which beer you were describing as being the primary  
for 10 days and in a secondary for two weeks. In my experience, an  
extended sit in the secondary yields a beer that is always deficient  
in yeast and that will need a yeast boost at bottling.

I would recommend adding to each bottle about 1 million cells per mL  
or about 355 million cells per 12 oz. bottle.

Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA



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Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 05:06:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: Glyn and Mary <graininfuser at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Flat Beer

Personally I would not boil the caps. Yes I did it as a newbie, and it 
didn't hurt. But why chance it. If you want to sanitize caps, use 
something else, idphore(sp), starsan, etc. 

With that being said what temperature are the bottles at? Did you 
try rousing the yeast?

Glyn
So. Middle TN



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Date: Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:18:19 -0400
From: stencil <etcs.ret at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: Flat beer

On Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:23:43 -0400, 
in Homebrew Digest #5602 (September 07, 2009)
you wrote:

Date: Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:31:45 -0400
>From: Tom Puskar <tpuskar at optonline.net>
>Subject: Flat beer
>
>  When I racked 
>it to the bottling bucket it was crystal clear and tastes great--but its 
>flat!  I hear a bit of a "pfft" when I open it but no detectable 
>carbonation.
>

Flat - or just not making a head?  If you drop it forcibly into a
pilsener or other tall glass, do you get any foam at all?  If you
slide it smoothly into such a glass, chilled, and then warm it, can
you see bubbles ascending?  Finally, is there any yeast cake at the
bottom of each bottle?  
If it does turn out that the problem is one of headlessness, there
might be contamination by residual cleanser in the fermenter or
bottling bucket.   Or, excessive protein degredation in a
low-temperature mash.  Is it possible your mash thermometer is
reading high, or that there may have been too slow a ramp-up to
saccharification temps, or that faulty stirring might have left you
reading the temp of a local hot pocket?

If you have access to some FermTabs or Cooper's Drops, try doping a
couple of the Grolsch bottles to about 50-75% more carbonation than
you originally estimated.

Sometimes debugging is as much fun as recipe formulation.

gds,  stencil



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Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 11:34:45 -0400
From: "Mike Patient" <mpatient at rta.biz>
Subject: RE: Flat beer

I've been having a similar problem lately, but rather than no carbonation,
 I get some that are and some that aren't.  I've been reading a lot about it
lately and for me,
 I think it is my bottles.  I also use Grolsh bottles,
 but I think a few of the stoppers don't work properly.
  I am starting to tag them to see if it's the problem or not.  
When reading I found that a lot of the cases of low/no carbonation 
is due to a lack of healthy yeast to ferment during bottling. 
When racking to secondary, it is important that you rack towards the end of
the primary, NOT after.  
A good measure is the amount of bubbling going on in the airlock, 
I've started to rack when it gets to 4-5 bubbles a minute.  
This is approximate, but it lets you know the yeast is still alive and
fermenting.  
If you rack to late, you aren't really doing a secondary fermentation, 
you are just clearing the beer.  Making a 'dubbel', 
I can see why you want to give it as much time in the primary fermentor, 
but racking to the secondary isn't for after primary, it's to separate the
live yeast from the trub.

It would be nice to know how the Grolsh bottles you have did.
Anyone else having Grolsh bottle problems??

Mike



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Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 16:11:37 -0400
From: Josh Knarr <josh.knarr at gmail.com>
Subject: RE: Flat Beer

Tom,

For whatever strange reason whenever I've done a high gravity beer,
it's taken it quite a bit of time to carbonate. Last one I did in the
1.090 range took four weeks before we have a bottle with a fizz.

One of the tricks I found is that if you're making an ale on the
cooler side or you're leaving it in the fermenter or you have a very
good hot or cold break - try to get some yeast back in suspension at
bottling time. This doesn't mean shake the carboy, but try to suck a
bit of the stuff on top of the cake up along with the unprimed beer.
Get that in suspension and then toss in the sugar. If you're totally
anal about not sucking any yeast up, you may really have gotten some
extremely clean bottles and have very little yeast in suspension.

If you've fermented things out to being very dry, you may also have
hit the tolerance of the yeast for alcohol and the little bugs are
dead. This is why the Belgians often ferment with one yeast and bottle
with another - the original yeast is passed on, no more, ceased to be,
expired and gone to meet it's maker, become a stiff, befrit of life
and rests in peace.

Hope I've helped,
Josh


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Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 18:25:01 -0400
From: "RJ" <wortsup at metrocast.net>
Subject: RE: Flat Beer

Gee Tom,

You mention everything but the temp that your carbonating at.

You should let it carbonate about 10F warmer than fermantation.

RJ 




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