Bottle Conditioning

[terrym]

@Pezza24
I assume that you can see a settled yeast layer on the bottom of the bottles. If there is, I would gently roll the bottles on their sides, not shake, to resuspend the yeast, then keep them at above 18*C for a further two weeks. If that doesn't work when the two weeks is up, the most likely cause of your problem is that you have not put enough priming sugar in the bottles to achieve the carbonation level you want. Or the yeast is dead, which is extremely unlikely, or your caps are leaking, which is possible.
But if you can see no sediment whatsoever and your beer is completely clear then there is no yeast present and you must add some back in for it to work on the priming sugar, however this is also extremely unlikely.

 

[Pezza24]

Fair enough. No shaking haha. There's a small ring of what I assume is yeast around the bottom of the bottle so if I can gently disturb that we should be in business.

When I opened the first bottle there was a release of pressure so there's some level of carbonation going on maybe I just hadn't given it enough time to work it's fizzy magic. I definitely think I under primed as well.

 

[moto748]

Resurrecting this thread cos it seemed the closest to what I wanted to talk about...

As I've remarked before, I have no chilling facilities, and normally my bottled beers sit on the kitchen floor, Whether you want to call that 'carbonating' or' conditioning'. And normally they clear and condition OK. But the split batch of bitter I recently brewed doesn't show a lot of progress in terms of clearing nicely. Well, the half of it brewed with Liberty Bell, anyway.


So today I decided on a plan I had previously rejected, and decided to transfer the LB bottles (plus a couple of the other group for a reference check) to my shed. It's not a 'workshop' type shed, it's a small one for tool storage etc. That should be a lot cooler. I'll be interested to see what they look like after 10 days or so in there.

This batch was bottled on 8/10/21, so they have been sitting in the relative warm for a couple of weeks now.

 

[MrRook]

In my very limited experience carbonation is done after a few days. There's a small amount of sugar and a lot of yeast in suspension so it's not going to take as long as the fermentation process.I usually try a bottle after a week to see what it's going to be like and its fully carbonated by then.

That said, 2+2+2 is tried and tested

Bottled Friday, opened Wednesday.

 

[moto748]

Further to my previous post (if I may bore you with this ), it also struck me, would I be as well moving beer straight to the shed directly after bottling, as a matter of course, before bringing back in the warm? Or even, chilling it whilst still in demi-johns in the shed,when noticeable fermentation stops, prior to bottling?

[Full admission: the reason I hadn't considered the shed before was because it was a bit of a muck-hole, but I've since tidied it up]

 

[Clint]

I keep my bottles at room temp for around a fortnight to start for them to carb up. They then get moved to the shed.

 

[lancon]

I'm finding problems carbonating my beer in the bottle, it's taken at least 4 weeks with my last two batches which I think is to do with using highly flocculant yeasts and cold crashing at 1 deg for over a week. Still only slightly sparkling after 2 weeks and more sweetness than expected. I strongly suspect that there are hardly any yeasts left and have found myself wishing I'd added yeast in the bottling bucket. It is perhaps one of the main motivations for me to move to either forced carbonation or fermenting and carbonating under pressure.

Anna

Might it be cold crashing for too long? Makes too much yeast drop out?

 

[moto748]

I keep my bottles at room temp for around a fortnight to start for them to carb up. They then get moved to the shed.

Thinking about it, I'm sure you're right, that makes more sense.