Carbonating Nottingham yeast

[Nick667]

I have been having some problems getting Nottingham ale yeast to carbonate well in the bottle. I use sugar and use measuring spoons and 750ml bottles. I started with 1tsp per bottle and got quite flat beer even after 6 weeks then 1.25tsp per bottle and got mild carbonation. My home brew shop guru says use a heaped tsp but I come from the days of kit and kilo where IT HAD TO BE an exact teaspoon of sugar. I brew ales at around 4% avb. I will try 1.5 tsp next time but there must be a better way than trying to guess my way through it. Any ideas?

 

[Rocker1986]

That should be enough sugar, but it may be easier to measure it in grams rather than unclear terms like "teaspoons" though. 5-6g per 750mL should provide decent carbonation. I would be looking at other causes, most likely temperature getting too low causing the yeast to go dormant and drop out, or perhaps the bottles aren't sealed well enough. There are 4 requirements for carbonating in bottles:

• Adequate priming sugar
• Adequate viable yeast (which there easily should be straight after a primary fermentation)
• Warm enough temperature for the yeast to work
• Airtight seal so created CO2 can't escape

Obviously they need time as well, probably a minimum two-three weeks at 18C or above, but not too high.

Failure to meet one or more of those will see your beer fail to carbonate. There are no other causes for it to fail, as it relies on fermentation in a sealed vessel to occur. 6 weeks is plenty enough time provided those 4 requirements are met.

 

[Nick667]

Thanks for that. I have had no trouble at all with US-05 and 1 tsp ( just weighed one @ 5gms ) it is just that Nottingham is such a good flocculater hope that's the right word. I've got an esb going now with a Mangrove Jacks MO7 British ale yeast that is similar to Nottingham and I contacted them about this and the reply was " rule of thumb 1tsp per 500ml bottle and 2tsp per 750 bottle"

 

[Matplat]

Check out 'pseudo bulk priming' by goatherder. It's the way...

This winter I found that the ESB i did with nottingham took around 4-5 weeks to achieve full carbonation, however I had thought it was more to do with cold temps (10-15)... but thinking about it is a bit more of an anomaly..

 

[Rocker1986]

Yeah bulk priming is what I do. Basically you mix up all the priming sugar for the whole batch into the beer before bottling it. You can either do this in primary or have a secondary "bottling bucket", where you place the priming sugar mix in first and rack the beer on to it. I prefer this to doing it in the primary although a few do it in primary seemingly with no problems.

 

[yankinoz]

I've used Notty on dozens of brews, bottled with and without cold-crashig first, and never had a problem with carbonation. Two weeks has always sufficed. I'll list several possible differences from your procedure and let you speculate on cause. I:

1. bulk prime, used cane sugar in the past, but dextrose anymore. Specifically, in a 19--23b L batch I stir in 500-700mls of dextrose priming solution (boiled first). I do stir up a little sediment from the bottom, but only enough to result in slight clouding of the beer. Too much storring brings up cold break.
2. try to keep temps after bottling at 18 or higher and as constant as possible. Notty tends to drop if temperatures fall very much. Note that bottles gain and lose heat much more rapidly than a bulk of 20 or so litres would (in the fermenter).
3. bottle straight from primary.

Here's another possibility: maybe your beer gets really warm before bottling. That drives out dissolved CO2, so that you need to generate more in carbonation. I use the nomograph in Palmer in calculating how much I need. The temoerature to enter is the maximum reach after active fermentation.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter11-4.html