OVHA Chat

I have a cream ale that doesn't seem to be carbonating properly. It pours and doesn't have any head at all. It also tastes flat or really green to me. I'm not sure what has caused this.
I did have an episode when I first put the keg into my keezer. I was letting it get cold for a day or two before I hooked up the co2. Right after I put it in the keezer my tempature probe (I think it's just the probe) went bad. I put my Ranco on it until I got a replacement probe. I installed the probe two days later and watched it for most of a day and it appeared to be working. About two days later I went out to put the co2 on the lcream ale keg and all of my beer was frozen. i reinstalled my Ranco and it took almost 3 days to thaw all the beer out. The two kegs that had been carbonated prior to getting frozen tasted just fine after they thawed out. I have been trying to carbonate the cream ale for a week and it doesn't seem to be working very well.
I don't know if I did something wrong when I brewed and the beer just doesn't have a head or if the freezing thawing has caused the issue.
At any rate I'm thinking about brewing a new batch and getting rid of the uncarbonated batch. Does anyone have advice on how I may recover this batch?

How are you trying to carbonate it?


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Co2 tank connect to my keg set at 9 psi. I bumped it up to 12 psi and it didn't seem to change it.

I don't know from experience but from googling around a bit people do claim that you can lose carbonation in the beer when you freeze it.

While cold (but not frozen ) I would bump the pressure up to 25-30 psi until tomorrow afternoon and then take it back down to serving pressure. When I use that method (with some shaking in the beginning) a keg can be at a decent carbonation level in 3 or so days.

Before doing that you may want to make sure that you fully thawed the keg and that gas is getting into the keg. It could be something as easy as a bit of ice on the inside of the gas post. Unlikely, but worth a look.

Agreed, bump pressure up to 30 psi for a few days.

Thanks all. I'll give it a try.

Make sure to purge the keg. If there is air in it, there's less partial pressure CO2, and carbonation will be much slower.

Little over two days at 25psi and beer is carbonated now. Thanks for the tips.....saved me from wasting a batch.