Scottish ale... No carbonation.

[yegnal]

OG:1.128
FG:1.027

Primary 2 weeks, secondary 2 weeks. Into bottles with 4oz priming sugar for 4gal bottling volume.

3 weeks later at room temp there's zero carbonation.

Any way to salvage now that beer has been primed & bottled ?

Hate to lose this batch.. It tasted great when I sampled it for gravity testing...

 

[HighVoltageMan!]

The likely reason maybe that the beer is around 13% ABV. A friend of mine had the same problem and I took his bottled beer and carefully decanted the beer into a keg. I purged the keg and carbonated it. It was a great fix.

Short of that, you would have to reintroduce high alcohol tolerant yeast somehow.

Do you know anyone with a kegging system that could help you out? Brew club maybe?

 

[yegnal]

I have a keg, and it may be worth a shot, but I'm thinking the bottling sugar is going to affect the flavor if I force carb it now....

 

[HighVoltageMan!]

I have a keg, and it may be worth a shot, but I'm thinking the bottling sugar is going to affect the flavor if I force carb it now....

When we did it for the friend of mine I thought the same thing, but the beer was so big to begin with that it turned fine. He waited 6 months before giving up on the bottle conditioning. I’d give more time and if in a month or two you see no results, then keg it and then rebottle it. Remember that carbonation can give the effect of reducing sweetness.

 

[Mark Farrall]

Drop in a small amount of dry yeast in each bottle to chew through the simple sugars already in the bottle. If you don't have any the CBC ones are good for this as they're designed to only ferment really simple sugars and drop out quickly.

 

[Nosybear]

I have a keg, and it may be worth a shot, but I'm thinking the bottling sugar is going to affect the flavor if I force carb it now....

It won't be the priming sugar that affects flavor, but oxidation might. Be very careful opening and pouring and purge the keg with CO2 before beginning and you should really be fine. You will likely need to add some yeast after 6 months - they sell conditioning yeast, I'm not sure what brand. Barring that, any dry yeast will work.