Beer not carbonated

aaronm13

I brewed a grapefruit DIPA in April and it hasn't carbonated at all. I've tried giving the bottles a shake, put some in the hotpress even opened one and threw a carbonation drop in to see if I didn't add enough sugar when batch priming. I've been reading online and have decided to pitch some extra yeast as the beer came in at 10.5%. Seems the yeast might have been knackered.

I'm going to add some champagne/wine yeast to it. I opened all the bottles and emptied them into my bottling bucket. It's in my new fermentation fridge cold crashing as it quite sedimenty. Just wondering will I need to add more sugar to batch prime before I bottle? If the yeast and sugar didn't carb the first time would it still be present. Don't want to get bottle bombs by double priming.

Also will I be better letting the beer get to room temperature before I pitch the champagne/wine yeast or pitch straight from the fridge? Going to rehydrate about half a sachet of the yeast, will this be enough? I've salvaged about 11 litres by the way.

RasTa

Sounds messy, how did you add the beer back into the bottling bucket

aaronm13

RasTa wrote: »

Sounds messy, how did you add the beer back into the bottling bucket

Just opened the bottles and poured them back into the bucket. Sprayed each bottle with some Starsan before opening. Was worth a try as it just doesn't work not carbed up.

RasTa

Splashing everywhere? That's not good.

Try what you suggested, nothing else to lose. Shouldn't get bottle bombs or anything like that. Batch prime again.

aaronm13

Gently poured down the side of the bucket, no splashing. I'll prime again so, was just worried about bombs. As I said I've nothing to loose. It tastes really good but just feels wrong not carbed.

BeerNut

aaronm13 wrote: »

decided to pitch some extra yeast as the beer came in at 10.5%.

But what's the finishing gravity? You need to know what the yeast has to work with before you go adding more sugar.

s3rtvdbwfj81ch

10.5%? what was the OG and FG?

What yeast did you use?

aaronm13

Just checked over my notes there and OG was 1.090 and FG =1.012 so got 10.4% ABV. I used WLP001 California yeast with a starter.

donegal.

soda stream ?

aaronm13

I don't have a soda stream so that's out. Would like to get to the bottom of this before I bottle again and more importantly avoid the same thing happening again.

RasTa

More than likely to do with the ABV but since it was brewed back in April I'm guessing it was sitting for at least 2 months before opening or even 30 days.

Maybe throw in more yeast when bottling big beers like this. How big was the starter?

aaronm13

Anything I've read online about big beers over 9% on homebrewtalk.com says you have to add yeast at bottling. Can't quite remember but the starter was around 1.5 litres. I've nothing to loose so I'll go for it over the weekend.

aaronm13

Just an update. Did the pitching of yeast at bottling. Two weeks in the bottle and cracked one open last night and it was perfect. Excellent head and lacing and had a really nice mouth feel. Delighted I did it now. Half tempted to pitch a bit of dry yeast at bottling in future. None of my beers to date have a great heads. Even my recent Wizenbock has a great head at the pour but disappears pretty quickly.