Bottled an imperial stout about three weeks ago, and it's showing little to no sign of carbonation. I left it in secondary for about two months, and used brown sugar for priming. Anyone have a guess as to what's going on? Did too much of the yeast die off in secondary to reactivate during bottling? Is brown sugar not that great for priming? Anyone have experience with anything like this?
Bigger beers generally take longer to carbonate. Chances are you just need to wait. Just to be sure... - What was your OG and FG (to make sure your yeast didn't obviously quit before you even finished fermentation) - How much sugar did you use? - At what temperature are you carbonating? - How did you mix the sugar with your beer?
I ignore beers in secondary for at least as long sometimes, and it's all in the amount of sugar you use to carb up. Without any of the technical questions getting in the way, likr abv, yeast strain, og and fg. If you used enough sugar to give the yeast something to fart out so you can carb up You've got at least another few weeks. I suppose the more entertaining question to ask is what kind of brown sugar did you use?
OG was 1.081 FG 1.024 So roughly 7.5%, and I used two slap packs of London Ale Yeast I used 4-5oz of sugar at priming, boiled the sugar into water and put it in to the bottling bucket before transferring the beer from the carboy to the bucket. Carbonating at room temp, about 60-65 degrees
Was it 4 ounces or 5 ounces? I'd recommend using a carbonation calculator and measuring more precisely in the future. It's possible the priming sugar wasn't mixed evenly with the beer. Your carbonation may vary bottle to bottle. That's almost a recipe for slow carbonation, especially in a big-ish beer. I'dd raise the temp to about 70F and check again in a couple weeks.
High-OG recipes benefit from re-yeasting at bottlin'time. Jamil sez to add 10% of the initial pitch to the bottlin'bucket.
I had the same problem recently with a batch where I used the same technique to carbonate. The bottles on one side of the table were like, orval levels of carbonation while everything else was flat. I think it didn't get mixed up in the bucket very well. I didn't stir, just counted on it to mix itself when I transferred it into the bottling bucket. Live and learn. Sippin a lot of flat beers lately.
