I cracked a Barleywine that was bottled on 1/31 and it barely had a wisp of carb after almost 2 months in the bottle. 11.8% abv, pitched fresh/active 1028 at bottling with enough CS for about 2 vol of CO2. It’s been conditioning in my house at around 65ish. Has anyone had high abv beer take more than two months to fully carb? I’m hoping when the temps rise this spring it will complete, but I’ve never had a big beer take this long with pitching fresh yeast at packaging. Let me know what you think.
It looks like the max abv for 1028 is 11% so I'll guess that the little critters are struggling and dying (and being pickled) in your 11.8% barleywine. https://wyeastlab.com/yeast-strain/london-ale
Could you please provide specifics here? What amount (and type) of sugar by weight and what volume of beer. Cheers!
28g of corn sugar for a little under 2 gallons of beer. I did add a small amount of US-05 for insurance.
28 grams is approximately 1 ounce. According to the priming sugar calculator on the Brewing Friends website you need: “Corn Sugar: 1.3 oz.” to achieve 2 volumes of CO2. https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/ So you added too small an amount of sugar plus IMO 2 volumes is a low target. Given what you targeted plus your low amount of corn sugar you should expect little carbonation for this batch simply considering those aspects. Cheers!
It's not too surprising. Finished beer can be a tough environment for yeast to work in: high abv, lower pH, and depleted nutrients and O2. It may be a while. Slightly higher temps may help, and I've heard that some folks with turn the bottles upside down and back again a couple of times to get the yeast back into suspension.
I’d suspect it’s the alcohol tolerance of the yeast that’s causing the issues more than anything. I haven’t bottle conditioned any high ABV beers but From everything I’ve read CBC-1 is the best option especially if your intended final gravity was pretty high. It has a really high alcohol tolerance, can’t consume complex sugars, and still pretty clean.
Yeah, I think CBC-1 is the way to go for bottling high abv brews. Next time give that a go. No need to rehydrate either, just dump it in. Be patient though, they might eventually carb. Also, try warming them up, like to 70F or so. Good luck.
Making CO2 is not on the list of Things To Do Today for these yeast cells. Self preservation and survival for a thousand years is on the list however. Not enough yeast. Yeast not tolerant of abv. Not enough priming sugar. Add to this Not enough time. Cold conditioning. The primary yeast is not going to do it, so be thankful you got something out of them. Poor soldiers. US-05 is useless at this abv. 2 vols is only just noticeable, and your experience with just noticeable carbonation is accurate. Cheers
I used the exact same yeast and amount of priming sugar on a 12% Imperial Stout awhile back and had perfect/creamy carb within two months. I'm leaning more towards your last two points of time and temp. I'll definitely be using CBC-1 in the future for all of my bottled high abv beer as added insurance. Thank you for the advice!
It took 4 months of bottle conditioning but barleywine finally carbed! A lot of maple and dried fruit. Looking forward to aging the rest.
