Slow carbonation

[Gugs44]

I've an IPA bottled with two weeks and not carbonated at all, I did have it sitting in secondary for a fortnight before bottling so would this have affected the amount of yeast in it to carb up adequately? There indoors in a box, wardrobe and covered with a heavy blanket, I used 130g of table sugar with 400ml of water to get a 2.5 volume roughly and it was 20c when bottling, I've never failed to carb up right...any ideas what's gone wrong?? Will I just leave for another while, it tastes good but very flat

[Garry]

I'm guessing that your wardrobe is too cold. Everything else you've described sounds fine.

Also check your bottle caps, they may be loose?

[Gugs44]

Bottle caps fine coz I always check em before boxing up the bottles for conditioning and wardrobe is fine n warm, heating on all day in the house so I dunno what's up, it's a first for me and can't figure this one out...I'm gonna check a bottle every week but no change from last week to this week

[Will_D]

Have posted this many times in many places:

When bottle carbing: Prime up 500 ml Lucozade bottle or the like. Leave about 1 cm air space then squeeze out the air and screw on the cap.

This way you can visually check:

1. The piming sugar is disolved
2. After a few days: Yeast is growing and the liquid is turbid
3. After a few weeks (having been left in a cold place): The yeast has settled out, and the liquid is clear and the bottle is under pressure

HTH Will

[Ciaran]

Did you stir the priming solution well enough? Sometimes you'll find over primed and under primed bottles if you're holding back for fear of aeration

[Qs]

I had a batch recently that under carbed and I could only come up with the sugar wasn't mixed well enough. I've gone back to stirring with a paddle again since.

[Gugs44]

Cool lads, I sit the tubing in such a way that it kinda creates a whirlpool mixing the sugar up pretty good, I try and not stirring if possible at all...put half a dozen in hot press last night just to see will it work

[Qs]

That's the way was doing it but after a good beer was let down by the carbing I'm doing a bit of stirring too. Lots of people seem to have plenty of success without stirring though.

[johnrm]

There should be no need to stir.
Assuming the sugar is dissolved fully in boiling water, racking on top of this should be sufficient to mix the priming solution with the beer.

[Ed]

Cool lads, I sit the tubing in such a way that it kinda creates a whirlpool mixing the sugar up pretty good, I try and not stirring if possible at all...put half a dozen in hot press last night just to see will it work

Did the hot press sort you out? I'm having a similar issue with my first two BIAB batches, I've stuck them in the hot press too, but there's no improvement so far  after a week (I have the 5L mini kegs, i push the centres down and the pop back up when there's pressure inside, but nothing yet...). Had similar issues with bottle carbonation in the first batch, I was using carb drops and they were dissolving, but it was very hit and miss whether they carbonated.

[Gugs44]

Unfortunately not Ed, still have 34 bottles of non carbonated single hop IPA, just gonna keg the lot and force carb it with my co2, it baffled me coz it has never happened

[Ed]

I was thinking that maybe I had left it too long in the FV and there wasn't enough yeast going into the bottles to carbonate - is that possible?

[DEMPSEY]

No,there is always plenty of yeast in the beer to carb a bottle.

[Ed]

No,there is always plenty of yeast in the beer to carb a bottle.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. I think I'll just have to invest in forced carbonation. I can't be doing with flat beer and it kills me to dump it.

[Damofto]

I find that shaking the bottles every 3 or 4 days really helps, it gets the yeast back in suspension and working again.