Why Won’t My Homebrew Bottles Carbonate?
Is a pretty common issue. Bottle conditioned beers just not carbonating. You wait a couple of weeks and eagerly pop the top on one to taste your creation and… completely flat.
When bottle conditioned beers there four primary reasons…
- Warm up the bottles. The vast majority of the time “my beer won’t carbonate” is because the beers are stored too cold. Yeast need some warmth to be roused up and encouraged to ferment bottling sugars. I generally recommend a couple degrees (F) warmer than your fermentation temperature.
- Not enough priming sugar – If you under primed you’re going to get under carbonated beer. A solution to this is to chill uncap the bottles and add a carbonation drop and re-cap. You want to be careful with this and make sure #1 isn’t your real issue because this can result in over-carbonated beers.
- Priming sugar not equally dispersed. This one can be diagnosed by bottles that are over carbonated and others that are under carbonated. To fix this on your next batch make sure to add dissolved priming sugar to your bottling bucket before transferring beer to the bucket. You can also use a sanitized spoon to gently stir the beer to make sure sugar is equally distributed.
- Misshapen crimping cup! Crimping cups can become warped over time. The produces an incomplete crimp and allows co2 to escape. That translates to low or now carbonation.
Bottle cappers have replaceable crimping cups/crimping bells for a couple different reasons. First, you may want to crimp different size crowns. Second… these can become warped and misshapen.
Some sources for replacement crimping cups
- Spare Crimping Cup 29/31mm via Amazon
- Spare Crimping Cup 29/31 mm via Label Peelers
- Spare Crimping Cup 29/31mm via Wal-Mart
I believe this particular model fits some of the most common cappers including Super Agata Italian Bench Capper, Agata Italian Bench Capper and Red Baron Capper Double Lever With Magnet. I think it also fits Black Beauty Cappers.
Related: Why Won’t My Homebrew Keg Carbonate?
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