Fixing flat beer

[BrewclearAssault]

Brewed a tripel from a brew kit on 9/17. Its been bottled for about 4 weeks now, and i opened it up and it tastes very flat. It must be something I'm doing because all of my beers have been flatter than I like, but this one takes the cake!
In 'Joy of Home Brewing' it says I may have had too much sanitizer in the bottles on bottling day. I cleaned all the bottles with Oxyclean and then sanitized them immediately after and let them drain upside down, then proceeded to fill & cap.
Is this where I went wrong, or is there another possible problem? Also, is there a way to fix this? In Papazian's book it says I can add some more yeast to the bottles and recap- if so how much should I use in each bottle, does it have to be the same kind of yeast (i'm assuming yes), and how long should I wait?

 

[cfonnes]

How much sugar did you put in when you bottled?

 

[frazier]

How did you prime the batch?

 

[HexKrak]

You could drop 4-5 Muntons carb tabs in each 12oz bottle and re-cap for a week. This could save your batch.

 

[Revvy]

Don't do anything! There is nothing wrong with your beer!!!

You don't have to do anything, and especially if you don't want bottle bombs, don't add any carb tabs or anything. You beer doesn't need more sugar!

The only problem is impatience. The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.

Temp and gravity are the two factors that contribute to the time it takes to carb beer. But if a beer's not ready yet, or seems low carbed, and you added the right amount of sugar to it, then it's not stalled, it's just not time yet.

Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."

Read the above blog, and come back to the beer in a couple more weeks.

If a beer isn't carbed by "x number of weeks" you just have to give them ore time. If you added your sugar, then the beer will carb up eventually, it's really a foolroof process. All beers will carb up eventually. A lot of new brewers think they have to "troubleshoot" a bottling issue, when there really is none, the beer knows how to carb itself. In fact if you run beersmiths carbing calculator, some lower grav beers don't even require additional sugar to reach their minimum level of carbonation. Just time.

Lazy Llama came up with a handy dandy chart to determine how long something takes in brewing, whether it's fermentation, carbonation, bottle conditioning....

Your Tripel is a BIG beer...Big beers often translate to months not weeks. Hell many brewers don't even touch their tripels for 6 months to a year.

Make sure they are above 70 degrees and give them some more time and they will be fine.

 

[BrewclearAssault]

Im searching but can't find how much priming sugar was used, but it was from a Brewers Best kit. If theres a standard for how much they give you then that is what I have always used.
I prepared the primer by boiling the sugar in 2 cups of hot water for 5 minutes, then I poured half of it in the bottling bucket, siphoned half of the beer, poured the other half in, then siphoned the other half, and stirred very lightly once or twice.

HexKrak, i'll try this on a few bottles at least to see if it works. Any other suggestions are appreciated too!

Thanks for the tips too Revvy, (must've been replying at the same time here) that makes a lot of sense. Maybe I'll try the beer again on New Years Eve or Valentines and resolve to be more patient with things in the future

 

[WillPall]

Yeah, I'll second what Revvy said. It's a tripel. Those are big (or should be) beers. Give it another four weeks then try it again. If it's still not carbed like you want, give it another four weeks. Your priming sugar didn't just disappear. If you go back and add carb tabs or more sugar or whatever, you'll end up with bottle bombs a month or so down the road.

 

[Revvy]

Yeah, you did nothing wrong. Just forget about them for awhile. You really DON'T want to f with them, because there is nothing wrong. Like I said there's no need to add more sugar, in fact in your case that is ill advised.

I recommend folks starting out DON'T brew big beers for their first few batches, rather brew batches that will be done in a "normal" period if time, not anything high grav. Heck, look at the Barleywine in my sig, that one won't even be bottled for at least 6 months, and won't be drunk for 5 years.

 

[BrewclearAssault]

Guess I'll stick em in my parents basement for now so i'm not tempted That would explain the rest of the carb problems I've had in the past as well- This is my 5th batch I think? I've always brewed beers on the heavier side and they've never been carbonated as much as I wanted but come to think of it I always waited no more than a month before I cracked into em. Thanks a million Rev!