Trouble with flat beer. Everything seems perfect and a few bottles always turn out great. very few! Please help

So my brother in law are in the midst of our 4th batch. Of our first batch ( a 5 gallon brew) probably 2 bottles turned out. These bottles were spectacular great carbonation, retention etc. The others flavors seemed ok but completely and totally flat. I noticed that the bottles that turned out where the smaller 12 ounce size.

3 weeks in fermenter before bottling and then 4 weeks before transferring bottles to refrigeration. We have removed the bottles and slowly warmed for another few weeks and tested again...still flat.

I personally suspect that we may have over primed and that instead of explosions we broke the seals on our caps. While inspecting the caps I noticed on the rubbery seal there is a tiny clear.clean spot along the edge where the rest of the cap is stained. I believe his could have been the point where the seal broke and was allowing gas to escape.

My plan moving forward is to remake the same batch and this time use swing top bottles to see if the results change.

Any insights you can share would be helpful.

thanks

A

Topic capping brewing equipment beer homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

Are the bottles that you are using screw tops? That might be the problem. Although some people have had success, others complained about leaks

How are you capping? Maybe you are causing damage by using too much force.

Test: place a balloon or condom over a bottle. If the item inflates, you have a leak. if it does not, open the bottle (after 2 weeks to allow for carbonation) and if the beer has no carbonation, then your priming is the problem.

1
answered at

It hard to diagnose this without pictures, numbers, etc...

Maybe you overprimed, maybe you didn't. Over priming with good caps = beer volcanos. And explosions. And a big mess. So maybe there is something wrong with your caps, bottles, or capper. Leaky caps should have held some gas, giving you random levels of carbonation. The only time I ever had a miss-cap, I could tell by looking at the outside of the bottle. The cap was obviously tilted. Weak/loose caps should be too easy to remove, but should still hold some pressure.

BUT, the most common cause of uneven / poor carbonation is not mixing the beer enough. Assuming you use 100-150g of sugar for 5 gallons (I use cane sugar, DME requires more I think), and you dissolve that in a few hundred ml of water, it'll be a few times more dense than your unfermented wort. (10% sugar is about 1.040, so 150g of sugar in 1.5 liters would be about wort's strength. Does anybody here add priming sugar with so much water?)

The priming sugar will sink like a rock.

My method is to stir the beer before I add he sugar, pour it in slowly (and quietly down the side of the racking cane) while the beer is still moving. Then stir some more. You'll raise the yeast up a little bit, so let it settle for another 30 minutes while you wash bottles.

Also - you don't need to wait a month to find out your results. 4 days will get enough carbonation to know if the beer is going to carbonate.

Please post numbers & pictures if you can.

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