When to Bottle

[dearleuk]

I started a Festival Vienna Red Larger on Wednesday. The Specific Gravity is now 1.008. The kit says to add the dry hops after 5 days and leave the hops in the bucket for another 5 days.

The problem is, last time I did this, I had no secondary fermentation at all. I had moved the beer into the warm. The beer was completely flat. I thought that it must have been a problem with either the bottles or caps. So I phoned the shop where I had bought them from to see if anybody else had any problems with bottles.

To cut a long story short, I was told that I was leaving the beer in the bucket for far too long and the alcohol was killing the yeast.

So what advice can you give me please. If I do leave the beer in the bucket for another 10 days should I turn the heater under the bucket off?

Thank you

 

[obscure]

I have to admit I am somewhat dubious about the shops claim about the alcohol killing the yeast I have left beer in primary for a month before bottling and it’s still carbed up. You can get yeasts specifically designed for bottle conditioning (they claim to work well at pressure and in high alcohol) but frankly I wouldn’t bother unless the beer I was bottling was right at the top end of a yeasts tolerance.

How cold where you storing the bottles as low temperatures will be a more likely cause of your lack of carbonation, than the alcohol killing the yeast.

 

[dearleuk]

Thanks for the reply.

I bring the bottles into the house for the secondary fermentation

 

[obscure]

How long are you leaving them and where (case in point my utility room is about 10 degrees at the moment so am storing bottles in the airing cupboard first for a couple of weeks (about 20 degrees) as otherwise won’t carb).

 

[dearleuk]

About two weeks. I'm batch priming and mixing the sugar really well. Mine are also in the utility room, but it has a radiator, so it's pretty warm

 

[obscure]

To be honest I still think it relatively unlikely your yeast is being killed off by the alcohol you can of course try something like CBC-1 or another bottling yeast these are designed to tolerate high levels of alcohol and pressure.

https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/product/lalbrew-cbc-1-cask-bottle-conditioning-yeast/
But again I would be surprised if your yeast was being killed off, a couple of other options you ,ay just need to consider leaving it for a bit longer. Secondly his much priming sugar are you using, to give an example I bottle my Milds with about 4g/L this gives a very light level of carbonation think pub level, in an IPA I will use about 7g/L. Brewers friend has a priming calculator.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/
Also I notice you batch primed (this is absolutely fine) but have you tried a few bottles from your batch. But one issue is that their is the risk of the sugar not being fully mixed meaning you might have some bottles with slightly more or less sugar per bottle leading to different levels of carbonation. I don’t batch prime in part because I mostly keg these days so just need to prime a couple of bottles to take up any excess but hopefully someone who does can confirm best practice here to avoid this but it is another factor to consider.

 

[dearleuk]

Thanks again

The kit comes with 150g of priming sugar. All the bottles were the same completely flat.

What about turning the heat off while the dry hops do their thing?

 

[obscure]

I admit I am rather puzzled by this one, and am tempted to say you had either bad luck or issues with the bottles themselves (which type where they). I do occasionally dry hop and have never know it too cause issues with my carbonation hopefully I am missing something blindly obvious and someone else has a suggestion.

 

[dearleuk]

Thanks for your help. 500ml PET, I've used them again and they were fine

 

[dearleuk]

Any other suggestions please?

 

[trummy]

Try adding more sugar to one of the 'flat' bottles - If its possible to culture yeast from a bought bottle of beer I cannot see how yours has disappeared. You did not leave bottle cleaner in the bottles by mistake did you killing the yeast ? Or get the brew too warm?

 

[dearleuk]

No, the bottles were all well rinsed, but thanks for the suggestion.

Do you think I should leave the current beer brewing as per the instructions?

 

[Brianbrewed]

That is very strange.
Alcohol wont kill yeast, especially at beer ABV levels.

I batch prime (when I bottle) and leave for around 10 days at room temp.

Is it possible the area the bottles were in was too cold?

 

[dearleuk]

Thanks for the reply.

I always pt the bottles in the utility room which is heated. All my other brews have been fine

 

[Brianbrewed]

So weird, the only thing I know it's not is the alcohol wouldn't kill the yeast.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

 

[dearleuk]

Thanks your help

 

[BrewMeHappy]

Its an odd one. If you still have a couple of your previous bottles left I would add more priming sugar to one and leave the other as it is and stick them both somewhere that is about 20deg for a couple of weeks and then open and compare them and see if this has any results.

I can't think of any issues with the dry hopping or have ever heard of alcohol killing off the yeast at low ABV.

Failing that, as had been discussed already, the only other things I can think of is the sugar wasn't mixed properly when batch primed or something wrong with the bottles.

 

[dearleuk]

I chucked the batch away, really not drinkable

Thanks for your help