Beer Forum

Hey Army,

I have a batch that has was bottled on 9/21/2011 and has very little carbonation. I've figured out why but am not sure how to carbonate them now that they are bottled.

This is a 5-gallon batch of stout. Going for a 2.4 carbonation level and used 4.2-oz of corn sugar. As I added the corn sugar to the hot wort, most of it boiled over. At the time I was more pissed at the mess than thinking about the fact that I just lost most of my priming sugar. In hind sight, I should have started the process over.

So I now have 5 gallons in bottles with very little carbonation. Any suggestions on how to save this batch?

Did you add the priming sugar before cooling and fermenting the wort? If you added it before the yeast, the yeast already fermented that out long before bottling. The priming sugar should be dissolved, boiled and cooled before mixing with the fully fermented beer at bottling.

As for fixing the low/no carbonation. Adding dry sugar will just cause any CO2 in solution to come out of solution and foam out. However, if there is no carbonation at all, you may be able to add the sugar directly into the bottles. This will be very inconsistent for the carbonation level and will probably leave some uncarbed and the chance for bottle-bombs. I've heard of carbonation tabs but I don't have any experience with that.

Good luck, you could even try blending with another beer. I did that with one of my first brown ales and a belgian blonde, it turned out real nice.

Thanks for the reply anday6. I've brewed well over 80 batches so I'm not new to this. I just screwed this one up.

I had thought about adding a small amount of sugar to each bottle but I'm not really sure what that amount would be. Any thoughts on this?

I had also thought about emptying all the bottles back into the bottling bucket and starting over. This doesn't seem like a good idea.

I hadn't thought of blending. That might be solution.

Any other ideas/suggestions?

I forgot to add priming sugar once to a batch a couple years ago. I uncapped them all and added a tsp of corn sugar to each bottle and capped them again, each one as I added it. They did want to foam up so it was a little dicey (see messy) but I did'nt regret it. They carbed up fairly well. Was a honey porter. Now this was also before I got hip to blending beers or before I heard of carb tabs.

Yeah, pop open each bottle and put in a few carb tabs. Quickly recap before your beer foams over and you should be good to go.

Never heard of carb tabs before but think I will try to find some. Thanks for the advise. I love the BN Army!