flat lager problems!

[tronner]

hello.

i'm a relative noob, done a few beer kits which have worked out well, but made a mistake on this one.

In an attempt to get rid of the sediment I did the following:

1) primary fermentation in bucket
2) moved to barrel for secondary fermentation (with added malt)
3) after 3 weeks moved the beer from the barrel to bottles.

Now - the beer in the bottles is nice and clear, but it's lost all fizz while moving it! Is there any easy method for adding more fizz to the bottles? would carbonation drops work at this late stage?

Any advice would be great - or i'm going to have to drink it as lemonade tops!

thanks.

 

[linearcraig]

Did you prime the bottles?

 

[tronner]

I had primed the barrel with spraymalt - and left it for three weeks - so the beer was fizzy and drinkable.

I then racked it to bottles - without adding further spraymalt - and lost all the fizz while moving it!

Should i re-prime the beer with 1/2 tsp of spraymalt in each one?

cheers!

 

[fbsf]

+1 - when you bottle, you need to add something for the yeast to turn into CO2, which then gets absorbed into the beer and makes it fizzy.

This is normally a small amount of plain white sugar, or the carbonation drops you mentioned.

You should be able to pop the caps off, drop a drop in each (or half to three quarters of a teaspoon of white sugar per 500ml of beer), re-cap them and put them at room temperature for a couple of weeks, then somewhere cooler for another couple of weeks.

By the end of that, you should have fizzy beer!

EDIT - ah. I see the problem. I wouldn't have primed the barrel if I was going to bottle it - I normally go directly from the primary fermenter, into a bottling bucket which has the sugar solution in it (known as batch priming), then straight into the bottles.

 

[tronner]

cheers, will put sugar in and wait again!

really wanted to remove the annoyance of sediment at bottom of bottles, but i guess that's not possible realistically.

thanks again. :

 

[ScottM]

If you want to try this again, and have space somewhere REALLY cold, then you can probably do it.

After the barrel has been primed and the fizz is to your liking, put it somewhere as cold as possible. The closer to 0 degrees the better. Leave it there for at least 48 hours to be sure it's as cold as it's going to get. Immediately bottle while it's still as cold as possible.

Having the beer perfectly carbonated and then chilling it to near enough 0 degrees will shrink the gas in the beer. This means that when you bottle it the CO2 is compressed. When you then cap the beer, it will warm up and start to decompress thus pressurising the inside of the bottle. You may not get it QUITE as fizzy as would be ideal but it shouldn't be too far off IMO.