Lost Abbey's Current Approach to Bottle Carbonation Quality Control

It is a PR answer, what that means is up for anyone to decipher. Between the fact that Tomme has frequently stated that he prefers to 'slightly' undercarb barleywines in the bottle, and the fact that they've had issues getting their barleywines to carbonate, I know how I would interpret that, but your mileage may vary.

Yes and no. If you bottle condition with the original yeast, it's an inexact science and can take varying amounts of time depending upon the health of the yeast (which is a function of how high the alcohol is and how long it's been sitting). If they re-pitch a new yeast for bottle conditioning (which would seem like an obvious choice on a 15% BA barleywine), it would theoretically carb up fairly quickly (a matter of a few weeks).

Well, this system (which I just Googled and spent five minutes reading about, so I'm hardly an expert) would seem to give far more granular data than just popping a bottle. It can determine _exactly_ how much CO2 is in solution so they could monitor if it's carbonating correctly, slowly, or not at all.

Without knowing how much it costs, I couldn't tell you if it's the best solution to their problems, but if you're fully committed to bottle conditioning rather than force carbonating, something like this would seem to be a useful tool.

Without being privy to how they bottle conditioned, it would be hard to say what the exact problem is. Roughly (ie, paraphrased for brevity), the needs for bottle conditioning:
1) How much residual CO2 is in solution...as a beer sits in barrels, this will tend towards 0.
2) The health of the yeast and whether you're going to re-pitch.
3) What quantity of fermentables you need to reach your desired level of CO2.

If you screw up any of those three factors, you risk not attaining proper carbonation. Without knowing whether they pitch new yeast, how much sugar they add, what kind of sugar it is, etc., it's difficult to say why they end up with flat beers. Hell, it could even be a packaging issue related to corking. I would sort of doubt that, since you would think there would be a bunch of flat Red Barn and Judgment Day floating around if it was their packaging line, but it's still a variable to consider.

That would imply that it will eventually carbonate - under some circumstances (dead yeast or insufficient new fermentables), you'd be paying someone to drink flat beer until the supply was exhausted. Considering the fact that Brandy AS '08 and various other beers basically never carbonated to acceptable levels, I don't think it's strictly a timeline issue.

If that's the only reason you're suspicious, you're not a very skeptical person. Sede Vacante sounds like a delicious beer, but none got kegged, they've had infection issues with their brandy barrels (apparently including the most recent Deliverance), and carbonation is a question mark. Considering they have less than 100 cases but the limit per person is a case, it would seem like they want to make sure it sells out quickly. By no means do I hope it's infected or flat, but the only way I'd buy it is if it was on tap, or far cheaper than what they're asking.

 

i read limit 2 bottles @ 35 each. i'm passing on this one

 

Haha i saw the "are the bottles carbed" question on Facebook and laughed at both the cajones to ask and the fact they replied.
Nice job

 

There was an article awhile back they had sent some of their barrel aged beers off to the lab to have the ABV accurately measured. They came back much higher than what they estimated....they were picking up significant alcohol in the barrel...to the 14%ish range. At that level yeast has a hard time consuming fresh bottling sugar to carbonate and that may have been the issue.

This doesn't explain everything, but is a clue for their flat-esque barrel aged beers.

 

They changed it to a case now. Wonder if anyone's gonna take the dive.

 

From a 2 bottle limit to a case limit? Geez.

Someone at the front of the line should open up a bottle in the tasting room and then report back on how well it's carbonated to everyone else in line.

 

Wonder how many people are gonna wales bro the release and buy a case of shitty flat/infected/not good beer before they taste it.

 

I'm wondering if the switch to a case means another Churchill's style shitshow or the chance at some beer without living in a parking lot for several cycles of the sun.

 

Switch to a case would mean very easy to trade for - don't wait in line.

 

Do you think I could maybe score a Hunahpu with one of these?

 

I was thinking some Hopslam. 2 bottles.

 

All set on Hopslam. I already traded my CFH for 3 of 'em! Score!

 

You totally made out in ounces - I hope you added on your end.

 

Not sure man. I keep getting told that there was ONLY 13,000 bottles available, not the 14,000 bottles we had first suspected. It's going to change everything.

 

13k bottles = ultra rare. 14k = rare.

 

Wait, I thought that 13k = Near Mint, and 14k = Very Fine/Near Mint...?

Dammit, I'm probably just getting my collectibles terminology all mixed up again... Hobbies are hard.

 

ISO - actually.

 

Ask them to use their Anton-Paar Carbo QC & find out how many Volumes of CO2 are in this beer.

 

Got a flat bottle of Old Viscosity last week.

Carbonation problems are still present. Yet I continue to roll the dice.