BeerBorg

When they were visiting for Thanksgiving, my son-in-law gave me a few bottles of a black IPA he and a friend had brewed. He had simply put them in my beer fridge, and I was unaware of them, and accidentally opened one. I was surprised when I poured it, because I knew I didn't have any dark beers in my pipeline, and wondered what it was. So that was kind of comical.

Thing is, the bottle I opened was flat. I asked him when they'd bottled it, and he told me 12 days prior, so I took them out of the fridge and decided to wait some more, thinking it just needed more time. But they never carbed. It's a shame, too, because it was a very tasty beer otherwise; a good, roasty malt backbone, and good hopping. I'd love to taste a properly carbonated pint or three of this.

So I kept wondering what they did wrong, and I got a chance to talk to him about it yesterday at the Christmas Eve get-together. Turns out they batch prime, and it sounds as if their process for that is sound (racking to a bucket, making a sugar solution), but when I mentioned cooling the sugar solution, I could see a light go on. He said, "Yeah, maybe we didn't cool it enough." I think they added too-hot priming solution, and killed the yeast.

Well, live and learn. A real shame; I think that beer coulda been a contender, Charlie. Anyway, I'm going to use the final bottle as a base for a mop sauce when I smoke some ribs on New Year's Day. Add a little Worcestershire, some bourbon, and it'll be put to good use.

I batched primed without cooling the priming solution a couple of times. 5 gallons of beer will cool a cup of water in short order. You might kill a few cells but you won't kill enough to keep the batch from priming. The only reason I quit the practice was because I was afraid of what the hot water was doing to my plastic bucket. I would look to other issues he may have had.

The more I think about it, the downside to batch priming is the risk of uneven carbonation among the bottles because the sugar tends to settle to the bottom. If there was no stirring he may have several over carbonated bottles as well as several under carbonated bottles.

When I bottle I always batch prime. You have to gently stir in the sugar solution, never have a problem and even carb across the board. Now I use flip top bottles so there is no chance of a miscap

Note to newbie brewers "Time, volume and temperature". That pretty much sums up the key things they should concentrate on. Sometimes the excitement of brewing overwhelms beginners unfortunately.

I usually use a couple cups of water so I don't have too much boil off.
I remove the pan from the heat and let it sit a couple minutes and pour it into the bottom of the bottling bucket.
I rack the beer onto the hot priming solution. It's gonna cool down pretty quick and racking creates a bit of a whirlpool.
I let it sit (covered) for 5-15 minutes, since I read once that is good.
Give it a gentle stir and start bottling.

I dissolve the sugar in a cup of water as it's coming to a boil. Boil for a minute or 2, cover, remove from heat. Since i do two 2.5 gallon LBKS at once, I do two pots of solution, and put one of them in another pot with ice and water. Then I sanitize bottles, so the solution is nice and cool by the time I get 5 gallons worth of bottles sanitized. I use the ice-cooled solution for the first batch, and by the time I get to the 2nd batch it's plenty cool.

The_Professor wrote:I usually use a couple cups of water so I don't have too much boil off.
I remove the pan from the heat and let it sit a couple minutes and pour it into the bottom of the bottling bucket.
I rack the beer onto the hot priming solution. It's gonna cool down pretty quick and racking creates a bit of a whirlpool.
I let it sit (covered) for 5-15 minutes, since I read once that is good.
Give it a gentle stir and start bottling.

That was pretty much how I went about it except the letting it sit covered before bottling.

The_Professor wrote:I usually use a couple cups of water so I don't have too much boil off.
I remove the pan from the heat and let it sit a couple minutes and pour it into the bottom of the bottling bucket.
I rack the beer onto the hot priming solution. It's gonna cool down pretty quick and racking creates a bit of a whirlpool.
I let it sit (covered) for 5-15 minutes, since I read once that is good.
Give it a gentle stir and start bottling.

That's how I do it as well.

I cool my priming solution as close as I can get it to the temperature of the beer. Then I add it halfway through the racking process. The whirlpool effect helps to mix it, and once it's completely racked, I stir gently, just to be sure. Never had a problem doing it this way.

And you won't have a problem doing it this way. You also won't have a problem adding the solution while it's hot. Which is why I don't think hot priming was the issue. I would question whether or not other beers from the same batch were carbonated or over carbonated.

Gymrat wrote:And you won't have a problem doing it this way. You also won't have a problem adding the solution while it's hot. Which is why I don't think hot priming was the issue. I would question whether or not other beers from the same batch were carbonated or over carbonated.

Yeah, I haven't gotten a complete answer from my SIL about that. He was kind of vague about the whole thing. This isn't the first time they've made beer, either, so I would think their process was established. So I don't know what was different. I find it hard to believe that I got the only four bottles that were completely skipped by the priming sugar, though. I mean, these things don't pfft when you open them at all. It's like opening a bottle of tap water.

That being said, I'm not going to play Sherlock Holmes over it.

Higher quantities of dark malt, possible low priming sugar value...

I had a batch like that that took more than a couple of weeks to carb, more like four lus weeks.

If you can stand the wait, hold at room temp for a couple of weeks.

Never know...

FedoraDave wrote:That being said, I'm not going to play Sherlock Holmes over it.

Well ok, if everyone just wants mop sauce.

But if you and he want beer you should question him and get all the details of what they did. Something will stick out as the aha moment and can be corrected from there.

I am with you ink, it would be driving me up the wall. That is a lot of work to just make 5 gallons of marinade.