Time for a mega disappointment. Yesterday I passed out four bottles of the Oaked Oatmeal Stout to some coworkers. Then, when I got home, I opened one and was greeted with.... nothing.
No hiss from popping the cap.
No foam when pouring.
No head on the beer.
It was completely not carbonated. It wouldn't be so bad except... I just gave four away in an attempt to impress! Clearly this would fail in that regard. The taste was still great, but the beer is just flat. What happened??
We did everything we were supposed to do to carbonate it. We filled the keg, primed it to 30psi, let it sit for three days to allow the CO2 to permeate the beer, then bottled it. We even tried a couple glasses straight from the keg minutes before bottling, and it was carbonated! What gives?
Well, after reaching out on /r/homebrewing, it seems the general consensus is that it should have been chilled during the priming, because colder beer allows greater CO2 suspension in the beer. Unfortunately, we omitted that step because we don't have the capability to refrigerate a keg. Looks like all our effort was for naught...
Some recommended using carbonation drops, but they're just simple priming sugars and require the beer to hold yeast in suspension. Given that this beer is six years old, I highly doubt there's any viable yeast remaining, so that's out the window. Regardless, I advised a couple coworkers (fellow homebrewers) who hadn't yet popped the beer to try adding a pinch of sugar and re-capping the bottles. After a week or so they can try the beer. We'll see how that goes.
In the meantime, one option we have is to simply empty the bottles back into a keg and prime it at a very high PSI (PSI vs ambient temperature leads to proper carbonation). Or we just enjoy it flat? Ugh. Not very tantalizing.
Further discussion is required.
:sadface.jpg:
No comments:
Post a Comment