Bottle conditioning

I brewed a chocolate milk stout. It has been in bottles for over three weeks now. I taste tested one a week ago and it looked great. It poured into a glass with a huge head, but there was no carbonation within the beer itself. I tried one again yesterday thinking the carbonation would come along more, but the results were the same. Please help me understand why this may be happening or if I just need to keep them bottled longer. Thanks in advance.

Stouts generally need more time in bottles to carbonate & condition. We're talking weeks or even months here.

You need to tell us more. OG, FG, how much priming sugar and what temps your bottle conditioning at will help.

Fwiw, I bottled my stout 5 weeks ago and it's just starting to get carbonated.

Huge head with no liquid carbonation?
All is well.
It just means that the carbonation pressure has not reached the point yet where it is 'embedded" into the liquid.

I agree with the others that it just needs more time. Also, if you just popped it in the fridge for an hour and then opened it, any co2 that is in there would likely just be in the head space and not absorbed into the beer...hence the massive head with little carbonation.

Thank you guys very much. It's my first stout so I need all the advice I can get.

iamwhatiseem said:

Huge head with no liquid carbonation?
All is well.
It just means that the carbonation pressure has not reached the point yet where it is 'embedded" into the liquid.

Click to expand...

This. You can improve this by sticking the bottles in the fridge for at least a couple days before you open them... cooler temps forces more CO2 into solution.

But really, you just need more time.