Re-Carbing in Bottles

[ronnie_pudding]

Hi

A strong beer I spent a fair amount of time and money on hasn't carbonated in the bottle, or not enough anyway. It's a strong barley wine style and pretty tasty so I'm reluctant to bin it. I'm thinking of adding a bit of new yeast and a bit of sugar to each bottle, and wondered if anyone has any experience of doing something similar?

I was thinking of rehydrating a dry yeast, mixing it with a sugar solution and splitting it equally between the 40ish bottles, then leaving it at around 20 degrees for a week or so. Is that likely to work?

Any advice gratefully received - thanks

Phil

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

You want yeast at peak health. On your next beer draw off some beer from the FV about 2 days into fermentation, and add some into your bottles and recap.

Ensure that the beer isn't anything incompatible with your barley wine, taste wise, and that the yeast is known for high ABV tolerance.

[ronnie_pudding]

Great - thanks. As it happens I'm planning to do an imperial stout next week so that works well, I'll give it a go.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

An impy could impact your BW flavour. But if you trailed it on a few bottles you should get a feeling for the process

[ronnie_pudding]

Good idea, I'll do a few bottles next week and maybe gear a future brew to something a bit more complimentary. Thanks.

[keith1664]

I've done it before using Safbrew F2. It's a yeast specific to the job and worked for me.
You do get enough in a packet for a huge amount of beer so will end up binning most of it!

[Sir-Rooty]

I appear to have run into a very similar issue - I've screwed up priming two of my recent brews! I got the calc wrong on the CO2 volumes. One is an APA around 4.2% ABV and one an IPA at around 6.2%. Both been bottled up for around three / four weeks and kept at between 15-20 degs. Just sampled both and very flat. There are too many bottles for me to even contemplate dumping it plus some mates are expecting some of it soon!

Can I get away with just opening them up and popping in a carb drop to each bottle or should I get some of the Saf F-2 mentioned above mixed up in a sugar solution and syringe some into each bottle. If the latter I'm guessing I will need to empty some brew out of each bottle as not get enough in to make a difference otherwise?!

Any advice greatly appreciated guys as there is about 60ltrs at stake here!!!

[ronnie_pudding]

I ended up adding some rehydrated dry yeast to a few bottles, I just dosed each bottle with the equivalent of 1/40th of a packet for a 40 bottle batch. I don't think I added any extra sugar, but it was a while ago...

Anyhow, it worked well, and got a nice carbonation. Meanwhile, the bottles I didn't treat have also continued to slowly ferment and have a decent amount of carbonation too. I think the high alcohol content was the issue for me.

But yes, the yeast addition was a handy trick and if needs be I'd use it again for sure.

Good luck!