There is a ton of information out on the web about how to fix highly carbonated beer. We’ll make sure to make post about that in the future, but there is far less information on the web about what to do if you beer in under carbonated.
It’s a pretty demoralizing thing when you open your beer only to find out it’s flat. So this is the quick run through to make sure that you are at the right point to do, “The Solution”.
- You added carbonation tabs or sugar to the beer before you bottled it. If so keep reading.
- The beer sat for at least 2 weeks. If it hasn’t sat for 2 weeks let it sit another and see what happens.
- The beer was sitting at room temp for the whole time. By room temp I mean it needs to be sitting in the low 70s. If not, it will have to sit for a bit longer.
- You open the beer and there is barely anything or almost no head.
If you have answered all those, “Yes” then here is the solution. I actually learned this from one of my customers, and then later in the week gave it out to another customer as a solution, he e-mailed back saying, “Yep, problem fixed.”.
So what you do is actually really simple, just place all your beer bottles so they are resting on the cap (so the neck is facing down) and then let them sit that way for 3 days. After 3 days rotate them, so they are sitting back up right. Wait another 3 days, then open them up! It’s actually really simple. It seems to work also, what it’s doing is that if the yeast was weak or got lagged out, it is, “Waking it up again”.
Just a quick tip. Hope it helps if you seem to stumble with it. Let me know if you have any other suggestions yourself.
Cheers
Related Post:
Jay's Brewing Blog 
November 29, 2012 at 4:09 pm
awesome tip! is that at room temp? or refrigerator temp? or does it matter?
November 29, 2012 at 7:05 pm
At room temp. If it’s in the fridge you can do the same thing but it just may take a bit longer since ale yeast isn’t to big of a fan on colder temps.
November 30, 2012 at 6:43 pm
I had a nut brown in the bottle that seemed undercarbed, and ended up swirling the bottles a bit every day for five days, which fixed the problem. This method sounds a lot easier. Ingenious.
November 30, 2012 at 7:01 pm
I wish I could take credit for the idea, but I didn’t come up with it. I hear some of the most creative tips from customers that come in. 2 minds are greater then 1.
December 6, 2012 at 10:39 am
just tried this on my under-carbed Belgian Ale and it worked great!
the only downside was that I could only do it to 4 bottles; the last of the batch
Thanks, Derek!
December 7, 2012 at 5:52 pm
I’m glad it worked out for you!
December 10, 2012 at 10:52 am
I accidentally put less sugar into the beer before bottling than the recipe called for, which of course made it flat. Will this solution still work if there wasn’t enough sugar in there in the first place? If not, is there anything else I can do (put more sugar in?) They have been sitting in bottles for 2 weeks at room temp.
December 11, 2012 at 8:50 am
If you didn’t add enough sugar to it, it will just take longer. I would wait about 5 weeks or so and then try this technique. If it doesn’t work wait another 2 or 3 weeks and then try again. Not adding enough sugar just means it will take longer for it to carbonate, it will carbonate though. This technique is really for those that had there yeast lag out in the bottles.