Re-bottling

[reno316]

So, I think I know WHY, but what I don't know is HOW TO FIX.

Bottled a batch of an American Pale Ale three weeks back. I'm pretty sure I didn't mix in the bottling sugar enough, since some of the bottles are really well carbonated, and some are as flat as my coffee table.

I generally can't tell which is which until I open them.

Besides "Open a bunch of bottles, hope you get an over-carbonated one, and mix that will the flat ones in a pitcher and drink it...", is there any remedy to this? Say, open them all, pour back into bottling bucket, add a bit of sugar, and re-bottle?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[amandabab]

If they aren't bottle bombing, just leave them and brew another batch. It will do less damage.

 

[reno316]

If they aren't bottle bombing, just leave them and brew another batch. It will do less damage.

"Bottle bombing"?

 

[lumpher]

"Bottle bombing"?

either you open them and carbonation spews everywhere, or they just explode from the carbonation pressure, and the glass shards end up in the office lampshade, some in your wife's computer chair, some on the ceiling, and the rest end up in the carpet... not that i'd know from personal experience

 

[cshamilton]

"Bottle bombing"?

Exploding.

That said what was your method for adding sugar to carbonate? Also how long do you chill before opening? Cold beer dissolves CO2 much better than warm. If you chill a good 48 hours and still have flat beer then you might have an issue.

 

[hillybilly]

I not really sure what you can do here open them all the one's that aren't carbed at some carb drops and recap.

 

[reno316]

either you open them and carbonation spews everywhere, or they just explode from the carbonation pressure, and the glass shards end up in the office lampshade, some in your wife's computer chair, some on the ceiling, and the rest end up in the carpet... not that i'd know from personal experience

Ah. No, none of that. A few of them have had a pretty loud "pffffft" when opened, and one began to foam over pretty fast, but otherwise no.

 

[reno316]

Exploding.

That said what was your method for adding sugar to carbonate? Also how long do you chill before opening? Cold beer dissolves CO2 much better than warm. If you chill a good 48 hours and still have flat beer then you might have an issue.

Well, I changed today when I bottled my Brown Ale... bought a bottling bucket and now I pour the sugar water into the bucket and siphon into that, then bottle.

But for the aforementioned round... the one with 75% flat bottles... I poured the sugar water solution into my carboy, let it sit for a couple hours to diffuse, then bottled. My mindset was "If you stir it, you're going to dredge up all the dead yeast at the bottom, and floaties in beer really suck." I let it sit in bottles for a couple weeks, chilled in the fridge for 24 hours, and opened. Some of the bottles have now been in the fridge for 4 days or so... I really can't drink the volumes I once could. Getting old sucks.


That's why I think that the problem is that the beer didn't have an even distribution of priming sugar in the beer when I bottled.

Am I wrong?

 

[cshamilton]

Well it's possible based on your technique that you didn't get even mixing. The sugar water syrup is dense, when you rack on top of it you get good mixing. Dumping it into a carboy won't do that for you.

If you get some carb drops you might be able to fix the flat ones - chill a bunch and if you get a flat one, add the recommended number of drops, recap, and give it another 3 weeks.

 

[Revvy]

Do nothing.

Whenever someone says they have inconsistant carbonation it's really that you don't have a carbonation problem, you just have a patience one.

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.

And just because a beer is carbed doesn't mean it still doesn't taste like a$$ and need more time for the off flavors to condition out. You have green beer.

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."

You may have just caught the beers as they were individually starting to pop, and happened to have grabbed the first ones that actually did carb, and assumed the rest already did, when they hadn't yet.

Inconsistant carbonation, usually simply means that they are not ready yet. If you had opened them a week later, or even two, you never would have noticed. Each one is it's own little microcosm, and although generally the should come up at the same time, it's not an automatic switch, and they all pop on.

A tiny difference in temps between bottles in storage can affect the yeasties, speed them up or slow them down. Like if you store them in a closet against a warm wall, the beers closest to the heat source may be a tad warmer than those further way, so thy may carb/condition at slightly different rates. I usually store a batch in 2 seperate locations in my loft 1 case in my bedroom which is a little warmer, and the other in the closet in the lving room, which being in a larger space is a tad cooler, at least according to the thermostat next to that closet. It can be 5-10 degrees warmer in my bedroom. So I usually start with that case at three weeks. Giving the other half a little more time.

Bottom line, it's not that the sugar's not mixed, it's just that they all haven't come up to full carb yet....Three weeks is not the magic number for finality, it's the minimum time it takes....

 

[thirst4hops]

I know this thread is a few months old, but I wanted to share my recent experience.

About a year ago I decided to brew my first hard cider. I did a lot of research, bought unpasteurized cider from my favorite orchard and other needed ingredients. Followed all the steps, racked 3 or 4 times over a few months to get the clearest cider possible. Everything was going great. Bottled it up, and sat on it for awhile waiting for it to carb up. Tried it after two weeks - flat. But I decided to be patient! Tried it about a month later - flat. At this point I was starting to worry, but didn't want to give up, so I let it go another month. Still flat. Apparently I messed up somewhere.

Fast forward until about a month ago. The cider was still sitting in bottles, having been put out of my mind. So I chose a bottle at random to see if, after all this time, something carbed up. And guess what. FLAT!

Or so I thought. I chose another bottle at random, and when I opened that one, it erupted out of the bottle. I opened the one next to the volcano bottle and it was the same story. The only thing I can guess is that I didn't properly mix in the priming sugar solution, so some bottles got a lot and others got none.

So considering it had been about a year, and there was no way of telling how a bottle may have turned out, I decided to re-bottle it. I did a lot of research and was fully aware of how it could totally ruin the cider, but to be honest, at that point I didn't care. I'd already waited a year, and couldn't give out a damn bottle. And I had yet to really taste my creation as it was meant to be.

Here's what I did. I sanitized my bottling equipment and bottle caps, and boiled up another batch of priming solution. I them opened up the bottles and very slowly, carefully dumped them into the bucket, along with the new solution. Some were carbed, others weren't. All went into the bucket. Then, without resanitizing the bottles, I refilled and recapped them.

I was prepared or a nasty, oxidized, potentially over-carbed result. But I was wrong. It worked like a freaking charm. The bottles are perfectly carbed, and it tastes exactly how I intended it to. In fact, I can't tell a difference in flavor from the flat cider to the newly carbed stuff. It is great.

I don't say all of this as an advocate of re-bottling to solve all issues. But rather than dump it all down the drain to recoup my bottles, I figured I would make one last ditch effort. And it paid off.

So there's my story. It works sometimes. Maybe it wouldn't as much with a true beer instead of a cider, but in this case it was a success.