Help with carbonation

[ggltd]

I have bottled an Imperial Australian ale 8-2-09. Tried one and there is no carbonation. Starting gravity was 1.102 final 1.01 which took from April 26 to ferment out. By my calculations about 10.5 abv. I have shaken each bottle to put any yeast back into suspension hoping to fix this problem. The brew is nicely alcohol with some licorice overtones, slightly sweet. This probably due to the corn sugar I added at bottling. I am thinking of making a Krausen out of champagne yeast and adding about 1/8 tsp to each bottle and recapping. This should dry out the ale and fix the carbonation. Any suggestions would be great as I have planned to donate a case of this to a local charity and the style really calls for some big head carbonation.
Thanks, Gary

[brewinhard]

I think you have the right idea with this one. I have experienced this with high octane brews in the past. The yeast simply are too exhausted to consume any of the priming sugar and fail to carbonate the beer in the bottle. In the past when I have had this isssue, I simply rehydrated some dry champagne yeast (Lalvlin EC-1118 is my favorite) and with a sterilized eyedropper carefully add about 1 mL of the yeast to each unopened bottle. Be ready to cap immediately because sometimes the beer will foam due to nucleation sites occuring. Keep them warm for a week or so and they should be fine. Don't worry if the level of beer in the bottle is higher than it should be, the beer will still carbonate just fine (providing you added enough priming sugar).

After this happened to me a couple times I finally got smart and would add fresh rehydrated champagne yeast to any beer I was bottling that was over 7-8% abv. It guaranteed carbonation in a very short period of time, sometimes less than a week. Can you say TURBO-CARBING?

[ggltd]

Thanks for the reply. Yesterday I added a few grains of dry Champagne yeast to all 48 bottles, turned them upside down and returned them to the cartons. I will give it a week or so and try one. I really think this should fix the problem. In the past I have always added some fresh yeast a few days before bottling any high abv- I don’t know why I forgot to do it this time…..