12.5% uncarbed in bottle

[neal.p]

Hi,
Back in April 2017, I brewed a RIS whose OG was 1.124 and whose FG was 1.021. I should've boiled the wort for a bit longer to reach the target 1.155. ABV is about 12.5%

I used O2 (initially and over the first few hours) and a 2L starter.

I didn't add yeast to bottle but I did add sugar. Bottle sat in the spare room through the Sydney winter (10-17c I guess).

6 months in and the four bottles I've opened (over the past 2 months) were flat...a very slight shhh when opened. The taste OK.

Is it time to yeast+sugar and recap? I did a test run in a soda stream type thingy...lol...and made a bit of a mess. Maybe there's another way to carb?

Thanks!

 

[peteru]

I had a similar problem with a barley wine. It would have been OK to drink flattish, but the extra sweetness from the unfermented priming sugar threw it way out of balance. Not all, but most, bottles failed to carbonate or had minimal carbonation.

I used some White Labs San Diego Super-Yeast collected from a fermenter. I chilled all the suspect bottles to drinking temperature, mainly to ensure that if there was carbonation, that the CO2 would be dissolved in the beer. Secondary reason was that if a bottle was properly carbonated, I was willing to consume it on the spot. ;-) I opened each bottle, added a few drops of the yeast sludge and recapped ASAP. Bottles were left at room temp (under the stairs, would have been in the 20-25C range) for a couple of months. I did this to about six bottles and all except one ended up with low to moderate carbonation. One ended up being carbonated just right.

What I learned from this exercise is that if I'm going to rely on natural carbonation for a beer that is above the 9-10% ABV mark, I'll be adding not only priming sugar, but also an active starter of a high alcohol tolerant yeast. It sucks to put so much money and effort into a big beer and then bollocks it up at the end by being too lazy (or ignorant) to add fresh yeast at bottling time. But hey, that's why homebrewing is fun - you get to learn and nobody is going to fire you over your mistakes!

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Use the right yeast for the job: it is pretty routine to bottle carbonate a beverage at ~12% alcohol, a pH about 3 and poor nitrogen status despite which we achieve 12 g/l (6 volumes) of carbonation. We've been doing it for many years, it's called the champagne method.

No need for a starter: use 250 mg/l of a dry yeast such as EC1118 (better still use DV10), rehydrate before addition, add about 100ppm of DAP (to the beer, not the yeast) and keep it at 15 - 18 oC for a couple of weeks.

 

[Cloth Ears]

Use the right yeast for the job: it is pretty routine to bottle carbonate a beverage at ~12% alcohol, a pH about 3 and poor nitrogen status despite which we achieve 12 g/l (6 volumes) of carbonation. We've been doing it for many years, it's called the champagne method.

No need for a starter: use 250 mg/l of a dry yeast such as EC1118 (better still use DV10), rehydrate before addition, add about 100ppm of DAP (to the beer, not the yeast) and keep it at 15 - 18 oC for a couple of weeks.

This sounds like exactly my problem. I've made a new version of my Imperial Stout but couldn't find any MJ Belgian yeast, so was using MJ's Saison instead. I figure it may have just run out of puff at around 11.6-12% (or maybe it didn't like the month with the oak chips). Anyway, the bottles are 2 months in and have virtually no carbonation. And, of course, being without bubbles they are a bit too sweet to drink. Adding a small amount of soda water dilutes them a bit, but adds the right amount of dryness.
So, when making up a mix to add to the bottles, how do I work out what to make up? I've got about 5 1/2 bottles (nearly 50 litres), so I'm guessing a 5 gram sachet of EC1118 would be fine, plus (how much) DAP? All mixed up in a little water and then added evenly to the 66 bottles are recapped? Does this sound about right?
Any other suggestions appreciated!

 

[droid]

are your bottles plastic?

I have some RIS from 2years ago and kegged most of it but had a few left over that didn't carbonate. If you have yours in plastic bottles (and have access to c02) you can screw on a carb filler thingy and carb up as you want one

 

[manticle]

I'm not in the least bit surprised.

Re-seeding with a high abv tolerant yeast is almost mandatory if you expect fizz. Your initial yeast is exhausted, the environment now pretty unfriendly.

I've done it with beer yeasts, similar to LC's description above - yeast of choice for me would be wy 1388 or WL equivalent.

 

[Cloth Ears]

are your bottles plastic?

I have some RIS from 2years ago and kegged most of it but had a few left over that didn't carbonate. If you have yours in plastic bottles (and have access to c02) you can screw on a carb filler thingy and carb up as you want one

Combination of CUB 750's and the new 750's from Liquorcraft - so all glass. And these are intended to age for a long time, so carbing them up won't really work as they really need to generate their own CO2.

I'm not in the least bit surprised.

Re-seeding with a high abv tolerant yeast is almost mandatory if you expect fizz. Your initial yeast is exhausted, the environment now pretty unfriendly.

I've done it with beer yeasts, similar to LC's description above - yeast of choice for me would be wy 1388 or WL equivalent.

The Saison was the reseeding. In theory it's supposed to be tolerant of high abv - but I'm guessing not as good as the previous Belgian version from the same people (Mangrove Jack).
So I know what I'm going to do - use some EC1118 (readily available) and DAP, so it's just a matter of amounts. From Lyrebird_Cycles' post, it looks like one packet of EC1118 (5g) and 5g of DAP should be enough.
I figure if I mix with only enough water to add to the existing bottles (where there's room in the neck) should be OK? That way the small amount of CO2 (there is a slight puff when I've opened the bottles so far) should protect the beer in the bottle.
Or should I pour them all out, mix in the re-hydrated yeast and re-bottle? Bearing in mind that I've only got a simple home set-up with a 60l fermenter and a couple of smaller conditioning containers. So if I pour out of the bottles it will be re-oxygenated (and I'm not sure if that's a good thing?). These beers have previously aged well up to 6 years and that's only because I've finished them after that time.