Need help concerning bottling...

[Afterlab]

Hey guys,
so this is what happened so far.
I did pretty much every single step along the way and we had slight problems. Some bottles are carbing and others are not. Not exactly sure why this is happening, because some consecutive bottles will go from perfect to flat.
Very odd.

To clarify a few things:
•We are using brand new bottles
•All are perfectly sanitized prior to bottling
•The hang time from bottling to capping is VERY minimal
•We are bottling after secondary fermentation

But one thing I'm doing that is worrying me and could be the 100% cause of my problem is after secondary fermentation, we strain the beer into another clean container filled with priming solution. We fill in a way to where the beer will naturally stir the solution as its being filled. From their, the bottles are filled and we conditioned them for one week and today makes the second week of conditioning. When i get home from University today, I'm going to pop one or two open to check for carbonation, but if it fails we are just going to empty all into an airtight container and prime with fresh yeast and do a "secondary" in the bottle.

Here are a few more things that may help.

1. Wanted to verify, I'm assuming you let your bottles carbonate for 1 week at room temp as opposed to throwing them in the fridge that same day?

2. Let's say you check 1-2 bottles and there is little carbonation, save yourself a lot of work and randomly check a few more. You could certainly have some bottles that are more carbonated than others and you don't want to end up re-bottling 48 beers just because you had the misfortune of picking the 1-2 bottles that weren't carbonated. If some are vastly more carbonated than others, that could mean the priming solution wasn't evenly mixed throughout the entire beer batch.

3. Honestly I would allow 2 weeks for bottle carbonation. Depending on the beer style you can notice quite a difference from 1 week to 2 weeks.

4. I have my doubts that you need to add more yeast. Unless you have been lagering for a very long time, you should have plenty of yeast in suspension to consume the simple sugar in the priming solution.

[scotchpine]

Chuck, are you filling 12oz bottles or 22oz bottles? Bomber style bottles take a good bit longer to carb up due to the increased beer to 02 ratio. I have bottled for 3.5 years and never had a problem not carbing, but I store mine at room temp and only chill a weeks supply at a time. If you are using 3/4 cup of corn sugar or a cup of cane sugar per 5gal batch and leave them at room temp ( upper 60,s ) for 3 weeks or mid 70's for 2 weeks you should be golden. You will see an increase from week 2 to week 3 in either case. The yeast strain you use can also make a difference, floc, attenuation, ect, as well as ABV strengh of the beer. Good luck to ya.

[maxwell]

Lets get a little more specific now...

The basic idea is -

1. Prepare a priming solution of 4 ounces sugar or 5 ounces corn sugar with 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes to sterilize. Cool down to room temperature

4 ounces corn sugar or 3.8 ounces cane sugar?

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter11-4.html

[ChuckMac2005]

I appreciate all the help everyone!
Most of the bottles are carbing alright now and only a few select ones are having problem but only once they enter the fridge (still unexplainable) but this does make for the third week of bottle conditioning. I think some of the problem could be stemming from the fact that we cut our fermentation time a little short by a few days and started chilling some bottles after only one week.

I guess more than anything the moral of the story would be "Good things come to those who wait"

Sorry for being a pain in the ass but I will definitely invest in everyone's advice for the next batch!
In fermenter: Honey Wheat!
Been in for one week now so I'll keep everyone updated on that and our future brews!