Flat Bitter

[SimonHitchcock]

Hi All,

Have just started drinking my Young's definitive bitter. It tastes good except the majority of it is flat. The first bottle I opened had some fizz, appropriate to a bitter, the other three I have tried have been flat with virtually no sediment. I am thinking that the fizzy one was one of the last that i bottled and therefore a bit of the sludge from the bottom of the fermenter went into the bottle. At the time of bottling I noticed most of the filled bottles were very clear, should I have made sure some of the sediment from the fermenter went in to each bottle or is it something else that I have done wrong?

[Waffty]

Unless you let the yeast settle out (therefore fall out of suspension) for several days, after it had finished fermenting, then you should still have had a fair amount of yeast in suspension i.e enough to secondary ferment in the bottles.

So assuming you didn't leave the brew in the fermenter for several days after fermentation (cool environments also helps yeast fall out of suspension), then did you put enough priming sugar into the bottles (usually a teaspoon per bottle)? And if you did put enough sugar in, then did you leave the bottles at room temp (18 to 20 or so degrees C) for a week or so, to secondary ferment ?

One tip I do when bottling, is fill a small fizzy pop (panda shandy type bottle), with my brew & then give it a squeeze every so often. Then when it's hard, you know, the secondary process is working, if it stays squiggy, you know somethings gone wrong.

Darren

[Reg]

One tip I do when bottling, is fill a small fizzy pop (panda shandy type bottle), with my brew & then give it a squeeze every so often. Then when it's hard, you know, the secondary process is working, if it stays squiggy, you know somethings gone wrong.

Darren

Top tip!