I bottled an amber ale about three weeks ago and it’s pretty undercarbed. (If you remember my other post regarding 12 vs 16oz bottles, it seems bottling is not my strong suit). The bottles were left in a room that’s about 70 degrees, so they SHOULD be well carbed by now.
I made a 3.5 gallon batch, and used DME for priming, but I think I under compensated with the amount. Is there a way to fix this? Could I make a another dme/water solution and add a few drops per bottle?
How much did you add?
I’ll have to check my brewlog when I get home. I went by Beersmith’s recomendation, but then cut some out because I felt it was too much. I probably should have listened.
If you’re using a priming sugar calculator like that, make sure that the temperature you use to lookup is the highest temperature the beer ever experienced after fermentation. So if a beer fermented at 68, but then warmed up to 75 afterwards, and now it’s cold conditioning at 40 - lookup the priming value for 75 degrees because that high temperature will drive out much of the dissolved CO2 and it won’t go back when the beer cools. Not sure if this applies to you.
Hmmm… I thought it was the temp that the beer would be bottle conditioned at.
So, do you think this batch is a dumper or can it be saved?
You can open the bottles, add sugar, and recap. Not simple, but it will work. The little carbonation drops are probably the easiest way to do this. Try it with a few bottles, wait 10ish days and see if you like it. Carbonation may not be perfect, but it will be better.
I put beers that I don’t want to drink (overcarbed, old, etc) in a case near the kitchen and use them for cooking.
but, unless the beer spent some time at higher than 70 that mistake would result in overcarbing as the calculator would recommend more sugar given a higher temp.
??? I think your math is upside down. If you should calculate for 70 degrees, but you instead calculate for 40 degrees, you’ll wind up adding less sugar than needed - which is exactly what you said, but not.
right, but the OP said he calculated for the temp the bottles would condition at (70*) I assumed that he fermented cooler than that so if he calced for 70* and the beer never went warmer than say 65* it would be slightly too much sugar. probably fairly negligiable(no spell check at work >:() either way though
I gotcha.
Prior to bottling, the beer never got above 65*. I used 70* to calculate the amount of priming sugar. It was bottle conditioning at about 65 and when it wouldn’t carb, I put it in a room that brought it to about 70-72*.
So from now on, I should calculate based upon what the highest temp was that the beer reached prior to bottling?
Yes, but 65 vs 70 won’t make much of a difference. Mortica’s right, if anything you’d have added too much - though you did say you added less than recommended. Did you add by weight?
Yeah, I used weight not volume. Unfortunately, I had a brain fart and thought it was too much. Lesson learned. Trust beersmith. I’m gonna try and add some sugar and see if it helps.