Carbonating 5-year-old beer

[BPgunny]

About 5 years ago, I made an imperial stout and it was the best-tasting beer I'd ever made. Only problem was it never carbonated. I've kept the bottles around over the years, intending to use them for cooking. Anyway, for numerous reasons, they've dwindled over the years and I was down to 5 magnum sized bottles. Recently, I got back into brewing after taking a lengthy hiatus and decided on a whim to open a bottle and see what it tasted like and also if it had miraculously carbonated in that time. Unsurprisingly, it was still completely flat but it tasted sublime. It's too good to waste what little remains.

I still have 4 magnums of this stuff left and I want to get some closure after 5 years of wallowing in my own regrets. There's no sediment at the bottom of the bottles and it actually looks like there's a sticky residue from where sediment may have once been. Since there were no off-flavors and I didn't get sick, I'm willing to assume there's no food safety issues here.

Does anyone have any advice for adding more yeast for priming these bottles? I'm also going to add some priming sugar but I'm more concerned about how to portion out the yeast. I'm thinking I would use a small amount of dry yeast, but couldn't even begin to suggest how much or if I should rehydrate it.

Thank you in advance!

 

[DisturbdChemist]

What I'll would do is get some champagne yeast and hydrate it. Just pour a little bit in each bottle with measured amount of sugar. I do not think you need that much yeast to carbonate it. Maybe a mL or 2 and let it sit.

 

[tennesseean_87]

If you added sugar back in the day, no need to add more. Boil up a tiny bit of water with some yeast nutrient, ten cool it and rehydrate the champagne yeast in it. Use a sanitized syringe to squirt just a bit in each bottle.

 

[jdhasse]

Buy a package of champaign yeast, rehydrate as instructed. Boil a small amount of water and add a small amount of corn sugar. Sanitize an eye dropper.

I would drop a few droppers worth of sugar water and a few droppers of rehydrated yeast to each bottle, add new caps, and let it sit for a few weeks. Depending on the FG of your brew u may want to skip the corn sugar portion but u must have had zero yeast or sugar or both n the bottles for absolutely no carbonation to occur over 5 years.

Someone may have a better idea, or you could add to a keg and force carb, but I did the dropper process to 3 bombers of my barrel aged RIS that would never carbonate. I didn't add the corn sugar as i did at time of bottling. It worked very well on 2 of the 3 bombers, 2-3 weeks. The third didn't carbonate but no contamination or off flavors.

 

[jdhasse]

Sorry, for some reason I didn't see the other replies before posting basically te same info

 

[zeekage]

They make carbonation/conditioning drops that might make portioning out the sugar easier for you (assuming you need more sugar, and not just more yeast). Basically little sugar pills. http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/munton-s-carb-tabs.html

Drop them in the bottle and recap and they'll dissolve.

 

[BPgunny]

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'll be adding the champagne yeast this weekend. I'm also bottling a vanilla java porter that spent 3 weeks in primary and 2 weeks in secondary. Would it be worth adding some of the leftover champagne yeast to that for bottle conditioning?

 

[jdhasse]

You can, but not needed unless it is very high alcohol. Your original yeast will be plenty strong enough, just add priming sugar.