Yes, it’s true.  I’m horrible at remembering to blog.  But can you blame me?  Sure.

Truth be told, I haven’t been feeling very beery lately, since our last batch has yet to carbonate.  I had a friend try it, and even after explaining the situation to him, his response was, “Where’s the body?!”  Beer without carbonation equals sweet alcohol water.  Considering how many batches we have done that have gotten their fizz on, what was different about this one (we keep asking ourselves)?  It’s not that this one has absolutely no carbonation, but it’s way less than I’d like to see.  We’re talking a "sck” when opening a bottle as opposed to a “sckxxxxxxx”.

Possible Problems

• We added the water and dried malt extract right off of the stove.  It went in when we had about a 2 gallons of the wort in the bottling bucket, with 3 still to go.  Even if the heat killed whatever yeast was in that 2 gallons, the next 3 should have brought the temperature down.
• There wasn’t enough yeast left alive to carbonate.  But the heat and additional sugars should have brought them out of hibernation.
• Too much alcohol!  Even with the extra sugar water, the yeast were suffocated in their own excrement (thanks Kurt Vonnegut!)
• Improper sterilization.  Always a possibility, and there’s no way to know exactly how it happened.
• Time!  We just need to wait.

Possible Solutions

• Pour all of the bottles into a soda keg and pressurize with CO2.  After a day or two, we’ll have beer!
• Distill the beer and make whiskey.
• Suck it up and drink it as-is.

My guess is that we have too much alcohol for the yeast to quickly carbonate the beer, but given enough time, it will be good.  Of course, the problem with time is that you have to give it, well, time.  I guess I can use that time to catch up on my blogging…

Cheers!