Beer is flat!

[biggtime]

Hmmm, just opened a bottle of my first full mash beer, and it's flat as a pancake. Tastes nice, just completely flat - oh, and hasn't cleared down yet either. It's been in the bottle for two weeks, after two weeks in keg to mature. I didn't warm the bottles up after bottling - might that be the cause of failure to carbonate?

 

[PD]

did you put in any priming sugar ?

 

[biggtime]

Yes. Did it the same way I did it with my last kit beer - mixed some spray malt with some beer and syringed it in. Should have been enough based on previous experience. The kit beer was actually a touch too lively. Whereas this one hasn't cleared and is basically flat. One issue I posted about earlier with this beer is that it appeared to give a very low final gravity reading - partly my hydrometer being faulty I think, but also noticeably lower than the 1.010 it should have been - more like 1.005 perhaps. Could that influence things? I'm also not sure I've ever warmed the bottles up enough to get the secondary fermentation going properly (I basically forgot initially, then when I remembered it may not have been warm enough in the house to really kick-start it). What do you think?

 

[biggtime]

If all I need to do is warm the bottles to get the secondary fermentation going, how long for and to what temp? I'm assuming two days at around 24 degrees (based on what the kits used to say). Is that about right?

 

[BrewBilly]

I normally put my bottled beers in the cupboard with the water heater in it, nice and toasty at about 21/22C for a week, often because of business I often have them in there for close on two weeks, I then transfer to the garage and put on the concrete floor. This method has worked a treat for me every time.

You may need to put your bottles in the warm for at least a week and the transfer.

 

[biggtime]

I normally put my bottled beers in the cupboard with the water heater in it, nice and toasty at about 21/22C for a week, often because of business I often have them in there for close on two weeks, I then transfer to the garage and put on the concrete floor. This method has worked a treat for me every time.

You may need to put your bottles in the warm for at least a week and the transfer.

Thabnks BrewBilly. Sadly no such cupboard here (water heater is in the cellar so doesn't work out for me) but I'll try to find a room I can get up to that heat for a period of time. Would putting them in a bath of warm water to kickstart things work? Has anyone tried that?

 

[TRXnMe]

I put my bottles on the landing for a couple of weeks, one of the warmest parts of the house as the central heating stat is downstairs in the livig room and the hall radiator chucks all the hot air straight upstairs :)

Another possible cause of flat beer, if you've gone short on priming sugar, is that beer is too cold when you serve it.

Last winter I had several kegs in my outhouse, despite plenty of priming sugar and two weeks plus in the warm it was coming out flat as a fart (-5 in the outhouse) but then when sat in the house next to me it would start to show some life as it warrmed up...

Beer disolves and retains more CO2 at low temperatures, I only read about that around February this year after a couple of month of slightly below par beer.

 

[biggtime]

I'm guessing (hoping...) that the issue is that I never got the bottles warm enough at any point. Our house is particularly cold. Initially I forgot to warm them after priming. Then when I brought them up from the cellar eventually, having remembered, they may have only gone over 18 degrees C for brief periods before dropping back to the ambient temp - which at that point was only around 16 degrees in my house. I'm now heating a room specially to put them in for a couple of days in the hope of rescuing the situation. When it's cool outside, it's a struggle to get anywhere in this house hot enough to get secondary fermentation going, but this is the first time I've had this problem...

 

[Duxuk]

I tried a bottle yesterday which had been primed with half a teaspoon of sugar and left for a week at about 18C. It was lively but sweeter than it will be and not as lively as I would expect. 2 weeks is a usual time to allow for secondary fermentation. You then can cool it. If it is still not clear you could try crash cooling it in the fridge for a week. Take it out and allow it to return to room temp. (It could have a chill haze at fridge temps).
A kit is likely to tell you you'll be drinking it in less than 2 weeks but I'm of the opinion that 4 weeks from brew day is a more realistic minimum.