I'm trying to figure out how I would up with all of my home brew bottles (7 so far) without any carbonation. Here's a run down of my process, any thoughts on the lack of carb would be appreciated. 1. Brewed a 5 gallon batch of beer (a stout, if anyone cares) 2. Fermented and hit target final gravity (after about a week) 3. Racked to secondary for 5 days before adding some coffee beans that were soaked in about 1/4 cup (2 oz) of rum. Added the rum into the secondary as well. 4. Let the beans/beer sit for a day. 5. Racked to a bottling bucket and added the corn sugar packet dissolved in 2 cups of water (per instructions on packet). 6. Bottled the beer, stirring the beer in the bucket every 8 or so bottles. I put about 12 bottles into the fridge right away and the others in a cool room (mid 60s). The beers from the fridge have had no carbonation. I chilled one from the cool room, and it had a tiny bit of carbonation, but not anything comparable to other batches of homebrew. Where did I go wrong?
Bingo. You should bottle condition in the mid-70s. Fridge temps are way too cold and low-60s aren’t much better. Warm them up for a couple weeks, then put them in the fridge. Should be good to drink in a couple hours
Your process is okay until you got to the quoted step above ^^^. As stated, those in the fridge will never carbonate, those in the mid-60s will probably be all right but will take an extended time. Your yeasties need a warmer temp to do their thing. Because I live in Florida my room temp is upper 70s which gets the little guys active in a hurry. So warm 'em up and don't be afraid to give each bottle a tip to jump-start the yeast/sugar. For clear'er beers you should be able to slowly tip the bottle while holding up to the light and see "gobs" of sediment slowly filter down when carbonation is complete. This is the yeast's calling card, they've done their job. With an opaque beer this still happens, you just can't see it.
Let us know how it goes. Did your recipe instructions omit the point to do the bottle conditioning at room temp, or you overlooked it?
The recipe did't include instructions for carbing. This is my fourth batch of homebrew, so I wasn't paying too much attention to the parts I thought I had under control. 6%. The recipe was supposed to go a little higher. My OG was 1.068, the recipe had it getting to 1.070. FG was 1.020. This is the only of my 4 batches of home brew that I've been pleased with the flavor. Two other batches (brown ales) were fine, but nothing to get excited about. So I was really bummed initially to get a decent tasting beer that had no carb. In a few days I'll start sampling again and see where things are.
A couple of suggestions: From your post I'm guessing you are just adding a packet of corn sugar to the batch. You might get better results by adjusting the sugar to meet a desired carb level (the instructions on the packet doesn't know what you are carb'ing). Here's a pretty decent priming calculator: https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/ For a stout you probably want something in the 2.0 - 2.5v range. Let the calculator tell you how much sugar to use. Get a decent digital scale, something like this is only ten bucks on Amazon: This allows you to measure out how much sugar you need, can also be used for hops and in a pinch could even be used as a postal scale. You are the judge on how many bubbles you ultimately want, these tools can help you get there.
The reason I ask is because higher abv beers can be stressful on yeast, but 6% shouldn't be hard to carb because the yeast crapped out. Give em all a good swirl and let them hang out at ambient temps for a couple weeks.
