Recarbing a recarbonated beer...

[jpsherman]

While rotating my beer supply (I put bottling dates on my beers and rotate as I drink/brew so that the bottom shelf is all ready to drink and the top shelf is the most recently bottled) a while back I noticed one of my brews had zero carb while its brothers were fully carbed. I tend to reminisce past glory (drink my homebrew) while bottling so I figured I must have forgotten to add sugar to a bottle.

So I proceeded to drop some more sugar in (didn't foam over!!!! Lucky me!!) and recap. Set it aside and marked the recarb date.

A week and a half later I check it and still zero carb! This time as I squeezed the bottle I noticed a tiny bubble issue forth from a miniscule crack in the top of the cap! This was a brand new Brewdemon bottle so checked the others and they were all fine thank goodness (I use a mixture of 16oz, 1/2L, and 1L PET sizes with most batches, so the Brewdemon bottles were spread over multiple batches). Apparently I just got one defective cap.

So I used a new sanitized soda cap and added more sugar once again (more foam this time, but not close to foam over) hoping that this beer didn't get infected in the extended carbonation process.

Will the repeated additions of sugar (1.75 tsp for 1L, 1.5 tsp, 1.5 tsp) dry out this beer? I would guess that the ABV might also be noticeably increased as well?

If it matters, this is the recipe for the affected beer: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1118

[joechianti]

IMHO, I would feel pretty safe about it, especially if I saw no funny stuuf in it and it smelled okay. I'm thinking the alcohol kept it pretty safe. As far as drying it out, again IMHO, probably not enough to be any disaster. If I was you, I would drink it once it's carbed up and then come back here and let all of us know the answers.

[Brewbirds]

I remember seeing posts that if you want to know if there is still active yeast that you can add some sugar and if it foams that means yes.

I have seen other posts that have stated that the amount of sugar you add for carbing won't change the flavor, ABV, body, mouthfeel etc. of a beer.

So if that info is correct you should be okay as the amount of change shouldn't be noticeable.

Infection risk is probably low, as Joe said between the alcohol present and that sugar doesn't tend to harbor bugs the risk would be in sanitizing issues.

Good on you for re-trying and not just dumping the beer.

[jpsherman]

Just tried my re-recarb beer and it came out great! No flavor changes and had a good head on it!

[John Sand]

Thanks for the update.

[BeerRust]

Great info!