Adding corn sugar to already bottled beer?

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Drinky_Crow

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Anyone ever try this? I have a year old black IPA that I discovered in one of my refigerators and it is still plenty tasty, but flatter than flat. I don't want to pour dozens of Grolsch bottles of the stuff back into a carboy, so I'm looking for an easy way to get them fizzy again. Does anyone know how much sugar I should use per bottle to feed these beers?

Thanks!
 
There's a thread around here somewhere about Dixie Dots. In the thread, there's a guy that does the math to show that a single Dixie Dot is almost exactly the correct amount of sugar to carbonate 12 oz to the mid 2s atmospheres of CO2.

Go grab some of those Dixie Dots from the grocery store and put in one per bottle.

Don't forget that you are going to need to "swirl" each bottle after you cap them to resuspend the dormant yeast.

BTW, why are the bottles flat? Did you have an error in priming the first time around? I would figure that out before I did anything.

Good luck!
 
Pouring sugar into already bottled beer results in volcanoes - just like in high school science calls.

I had this problem in the past and tried many different ways to solve it. The only one that worked was to take the amount of sugar that you want/need and boil it for a few minutes in water. Let it cool, then take a syringe and squirt a little bit into each bottle before re-capping (new caps).

Just mixing sugar and water (no boil) caused volcanoes, too.
 
I ordered some Coopers Carbonation Drops from Amazon and will prolly use those for some of the batch. I'll still give the sugar a shot, too, though. I always boil water and create a solution when adding sugar to my beers, but I'm not sure what amount to pour/squirt into each grolsch bottle (1.5L, I think). I think I'll see if one of the carbonation drops works and if so, call it a day.

Not sure why they went flat. They are over a year old, so maybe that has something to do with it - no idea. Even flat they taste good and since it's coming up on IPA season, I want to drink/share them, so here's hoping this works! Thanks for all the help
 
Not sure why they went flat. They are over a year old, so maybe that has something to do with it - no idea.

The age wouldn't have anything to do with it. The CO2 and pressure in a closed system will still be there 10,000 years later if the system stays closed.....
 
after a year all the yeast in there will be dead. you'll need to add a little fresh yeast along with the sugar. you'll probably need to add them separately, since mixing the yeast with concentrated sugar will hurt if not kill the yeast. you don't need much yeast. rehydrate a quarter of a packet of dry yeast and a drop or two of that should be enough.
 
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