Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

With only 8 batches under my belt (extract), I need some guidance here from the more experienced brewers. My problem is that a batch I bottled three weeks ago has not conditioned in the slightest. None of the following is the cause:

1) presence of bleach in the bottles. I rinsed all of them very well and even if I had not, one would expect that at least some of the bottles would have some carbonation. I have opened 2 test bottles to find entirely flat beer, and no bottle in the entire bunch has a sediment layer.

2) absence of priming sugar. Nope, I added the usual 3/4 c. corn sugar for my 5gal batch.

3) wrong temperature. Not this either. I have the bottles in my "conditioning closet" at a cozy, constantly monitored 70 degrees, sometimes ranging up to 72 or so or down to 68. It's a Whitelabs British ale yeast, btw.

I conclude that whatever small amount of yeast is present is no longer alive. As I would like to salvage this batch, I've been thinking of possible solutions. Please give me your input.

Solutions:

1) Make a starter from dry yeast and add a small amount to each bottle individually. This risks contamination and oxidization, but so does anything else that involves opening the bottles. This also risks that, because the dry yeast is more attenuative than the liquid yeast it will consume not only the priming sugar, but also some of the remaining malt, creating the possibility of exploding bottles.

2) Pour all of the beer into a Cornelius keg and carbonate by putting under CO2 pressure and shaking. Alas, I have no kegging equipment.   
 
3) Pour all the beer into a fermenter (again) and add dry yeast. Ferment to completion, add priming sugar and rebottle. This strikes me as something that is nearly certain to ruin the beer. The oxidization and contamination risks seem too high.

4) Add nifty, solid CO2 tabs to each bottle that dissolve in the beer and create the desired carbonation. Problem: I don't know if such a thing exists. 

I patiently await your sage advice.
 

Sorry hear about the carbonation issues.  I have a harder time in the winter time getting my bottles to the right amount of carbonation just because my house to cooler than it normally is the rest of the year.  One of my recent batches was having a lot of trouble carbonating, but it was mostly my fault.  It was Belgian Strong Dark Ale so it was a high alcohol brew (not good for carbonation), the yeast was pooped from working so hard (ditto), I had cold crashed it to clear it out (ditto) and my beer closet is cool this time of year (harder to control.).  Three weeks later, still no signs of even low carbonation.

The first thing I’ll tell you is I wouldn’t advise pouring the beers into, well, anything. A keg, a carboy, whatever.  That is a lot of splashing and oxygenation of your brew.

What I did, and I’m telling you because it worked, is that I just pitched new dry yeast.  I always have a spare couple of packets of Safbrew T-58 because I know I will have a tough batch to carbonate occasionally, and I’ll throw it in the carboy before bottling.  Basically, I just rebottled the batch one by freaking one.  I didn’t even rehydrate the yeast because it didn’t need to and I didn’t want the bottle refermation to have to much power behind it.  I simply popped the top, put a tiny bit of dry yeast into the bottle, re-capped it and gently moved on to the next bottle.  I let them all sit there for about 10 minutes (letting the floating yeast rehydrate on the surface) and then I shook them all up pretty hard.  Two weeks later, they were perfectly carbonated. 

This worked for me.  The only thing I would warn you about is to make sure your beer hit terminal gravity.  If it didn’t, then you do have a chance of making bottle bombs with all those leftover sugars.  If it was done, you should be fine.

Good luck.

I have done a similar thing as Jamey, in the past.  The only word of caution I would add here is something I recently heard on the Brewing Network.  Jamil Zainacheff was talking about repitching to help beer reach a drier FG.  He said that it is very difficult to get dormant yeast (even dry yeast) to get your beer down to a level you might want it.  So, he recommended making a start and getting the yeast really going, before you add it to your beer.  This might be a different case, as you only need enough to carbonate, not drop the SG 10 points.  However, I figured I would pass along the tip.

*cough* keg! *cough*

(sorry, had to get my keg 2-cents in there! )

Ehehm, Keg, Ehehm.   

Keg.......those are helpful posts.

Maybe when someone is having trouble with a stuck lager fermentation, we could recommend making an ale. 

I have had this happen a couple times in the past.  What always worked for me was to roll the bottles to get the yeast back into suspension and then move it to a warmer area, say 75 degrees.  I have never had to re-open a bottle and add yeast or sugar but there is a first time for everything.

...jealous.

Seriously though.  This is not a good thing when a fellow homebrewer has touble with bottle fermentation. I would say that I agree with mixing the yeast back into solution and warming the bottles up in the mid 70's. That might work. If the yeast are dead, they will not resurrect. If they are injured, they can kick back into gear with some oxygen and the right nutrients.

Sometimes this can be a problem with extended lagering, where the yeast have fallen out of solution or complete autolysis occured because the lager cold-conditioned so long (ie. >3 months). The best thing to do is to add some fresh yeast to the bottling tank (1 tsp/5 gallons), it doesn't take much. You can also save 1 cup of the trub/lees from primary fermentation, put it in a ziplock bag, and freeze it for bottling time. But if the yeast are dead or injured, there is no way of telling until you figure out that a month after bottling, your bottles didn't prime.  That sucks.

The other option is to empty all of the bottles into a keg, hook one end to CO2 gas and the other end to a beer tap line and have at it.   

Thanks for all the posts, guys. I have decided to give the beer some more time in the bottle and only pitch a bit of dry yeast into each if it becomes nearly 100% certain that all of the yeast is dead.

As for kegging equipment...I'd love to, but my current refrigeration and cohabitation situation precludes it. 

Give more information about your brew. Is it very high alcohol? Has the brew exceeded the yeast's alcohol tolerance? Did the brew sit for a long time in secondary which would cause it to poop out (months and months?) Did you cold condition it before bottling for an long period of time (weeks) and all the yeast may have fallen out of suspension?

Under typical circumstances, yeast doesn't "poop out." You have not given any information that would indicate that the yeast has pooped out. The British Strain is highly flocculating. I would turn the bottles upside every day or so for a few weeks as you may need to get the yeast back into suspension.