Begin Brewing!

A long time ago, I began to notice that when I brewed beers over 9-10% alcohol by volume (ABV) that they tended not to carbonate in the bottle.  It became a rule of thumb for me to always include bottle conditioning yeast (either CBC-1 or champagne yeast ) any time I brewed a beer over 9%.  I forgot to do that with a beer that came out at 10.9%, and it failed to carbonate.  I learned with that beer that by  inverting the bottles daily for a week  to rouse the yeast inside, I could achieve carbonation. When I brewed a batch of beer intended to replicate  Dogfish Head's Palo Santo Marron , I decided to take a chance and not dose it with bottle conditioning yeast either.  After weeks in a warm location, there was virtually no carbonation, even using the bottle-inversion trick. For another two weeks, I increased the temp to 80F and did a daily inversion of the bottles, while also rotating them around the space inside the cooler to ensure that eve...

Could flipping your bottles upside down every day actually fix a lack of carbonation? Earlier in my brewing history, I made a really nice Belgian Tripel.  It had great flavor and aroma, but came out of the bottle totally flat - not a hint of carbonation.  I tried giving it more time, but that didn't work. I tried moving it outside where temperatures were in the lower 80's.  No good.  After two months, the beer remained flat. I reached out to a home brewing magazine for advice.  They suggested opening some of the bottles and pitching in some dry champagne yeast, then shaking the bottle gently to rehydrate the yeast.  This, combined with another month, did not solve the problem. Eventually, I poured the flat beer into a uKeg stainless steel growler and force-carbonated it in there. After that, I tried to live by a simple rule.  If the beer I brewed was at or below 8% ABV, I would condition it as-is.  If it was over 8%, I would pitch in some ...

In June, I brewed what was probably my fourth batch of Belgian style Tripel ale (I didn't keep good records until last August so I'm not sure how many attempts there have been).  Each batch I've made has gotten a little better.  This one was no exception.  I brewed it from an ingredient kit, supplemented with different yeast, coriander, and sweet orange peel.  When I took the last sample from the fermenter for testing, it smelled and tasted great - though obviously flat. As I often do, I bottled this beer following my usual process.  I cleaned and sanitized my bottles.  I did the same with my caps.  I dropped a Fermenter's Favorites carbonation drop in each bottle, filled it, and capped it.  The bottles were placed in my basement inside a cooler, to stabilize the temperatures and provide protection should a bottle burst open.  I left them for two weeks and put one bottle in the refrigerator.  The next day, I pulled out the bottle, popp...

I have a Belgian Dubbel in the fermenter that will need to be bottled soon.  I wondered if Belgian Candi Syrup could be used as the priming sugar.  As it turns out, you can do that.   A document on the Simplicity Candi Syrup web site explains now. You need to know two things about your beer in order to do this properly.  First, what volume of CO2 do you want in the beer?  You can determine this from the style.  My Dubbel will want something in the range of 2.3 to 2.9 Volumes.  Next, what is the volume of beer you're carbonating?  In my case, this is a 2.5 gallon batch. On the Simplicity Candi Syrup web site, they offer an instruction document for carbonating beer with Candi Syrup.  The information below is derived from that document. CO2 (Volumes) Grams of Candi Syrup per Gallon 2 22.47 2.1 24.66 2.2 26.84 2.3 29.03 2.4 31.21 2.5 33.4 2.6 35.58 2.7 3...