good afternoon, I brewed my Russian Imperial Stout last spring. aged it for 5 months bottled back in early Nov. with 5 oz of priming sugar. now it's almost April and still not carbonated. it's about 9.8% abv. i cant keg due to not enough room and funds. what are my options? thanks in advance!
After 4 months at 70F, even a really big beer should have some carbonation, assuming any viable yeast at bottling. But at 9.8%, I suspect that you're up against S-04's ABV tolerance. You may want to consider adding a small amount of dry yeast to each bottle and re-capping. CBC-1 would be a good choice.
Edit. What Vike said. Using S 04 to carbonate a 9.8% is difficult. That yeast is not going to be happy, especially if it is the yeast left from primary fermentation. It's just too tired. Very boozy/malty brews don't always hold a good head and sometimes seem a bit flat, so even with little carbonation you might find this beer underwhelming. Carefully toss in some healthy dry yeast to each bottle. Cheers
Adding some alcohol tolerant dry yeast is your best bet now. I brew a few batches of higher gravity beer styles and my practice is to add dry yeast into the bottling bucket as ‘insurance’ for carbonating the beer. I would recommend you do the same for future batches of high gravity beers. Cheers!
As stated, CBC-1 is your yeast of choice here. You'll find it in 11g packets . . . if you're talking a 5 gal batch you'll only need about 1/4 of a packet. Seems wasteful but that's how that works. Here are the details of use: https://www.lallemandbrewing.com/wp...ractices-Bottle_conditioning_-_printbleed.pdf
So you didn’t add more yeast to a 10% beer that was aged for 5 months when you added sugar? Get some CBC-1 for sure.
thanks all for the advice. I was rwally stumped because i really didn't want to toss the beer. I'll be brewing the same batch next week or so, can I keep a few bottles aside and do a blend or nah?
Sure you can blend your brews. But blending wont make a bad beer good and usually makes two mediocre beers. And it wont help your carbonation problem. And you risk oxidation. So, I don't really see any point to it. Cheers.
Not even a hiss?. This happened to me when i was sold the wrong bell for my capper and the bottles didn't seal right.
This was my first thought . I would think that some yeast would still be alive to nibble some corn sugar. That said I haven’t fermented a big beer for 5 months on s04
I had this happen with a big Belgian ale once. Adding some alcohol-tolerant yeast should do the trick. It did for me. Cheers!
