homebrewandbeer.com

I've recently BP my SQ amber ale clone with 170gm of Dextrose to find that after a couple of weeks it hasn't carbinated as I would have expected. The taste is awesome but it lacks the bubbles. I'm using PET bottles and whilst the bottles are tight as a nun in the study sitting at about 24 deg constantly, as soon as I put them in the fridge they go as soft as.

I don't know if it makes any difference, but I also racked for a week and CC for a week before alowing it to rise back to room temp before BP.

Why is this and have I used too little dex?

Help me before I thow down another one please.

Cheers all

leave them for a little longer, but also, how much airspace did you leave at the top of the bottle? more airspace=more compressible matter in the bottle=less CO2 dissolving in the beer.

Just your normal amount of air space at the top. No different to if I was using carb drops which seem to carb better at the moment. Just how much dex should I be using for 23L?

170gm is within range. how did you dissolve and mix it?

it might just come down to waiting another couple weeks; the general consensus seems to be that carb drops tend to overcarbonate anyway.

keg, this also happened to me. Giving the lids another tightening before putting the bottles in the fridge fixed the problem.

hmm.. were the caps new? i've never had that problem, even with caps that i've re-used a few times

I've used new lids for this one as it's the first "Premium" beer that I've brewed. i usually just go for the elstocko tooheys draught with a blue gum or bush mallee honey.

As for disolving the dex for the BP I only used about 200ml of boiling water to disolve the 170gms of dex.

Dr Smurto was the one that put me onto BP in the first place and has givin me plenty of info on how it should be done. My only drama is the carb level now.

Maybe I do just have to wait a little longer.

Look at storage temperature. Needs to be room temperature to carb up.

Also 170g dex into a brew sitting at 4C is TOTALLY different to 170g at 20C look at the bulk priming guides there's a link in here somewhere.

The room they are carbing in is sitting constantly at about 24 deg. I have found the BP guide on here and have coppied it. Thanks

Are they hard before you put them into the fridge? I think youll find they always go soft once they are cold. Its prob due to cold beer being able to hold more co2 than when it is warm.

Try this one
http://www.geocities.com/lesjudith/Alco ... lator.html

Cheers for that. Good little calculator.

Ok...according to the calculator I should have used about 187g of dex for a carb level of 2.8.

I'll be using a little more for my next BP for sure.

Thanks again

I use 160g-170g to great success. IMHO I wouldn't go higher than 190g and I believe you'd be better off giving it a bit more time in the bottle.