[dmtaylor]

If you're already experiencing a slight hiss when opening a bottle and very slight carbonation, then my guess is you only need to wait about another 4 days and all your bottles will be carbonated just fine.  My bottles usually take between 10-15 days to carbonate, sometimes a little longer for lagers and ciders and bigger beers but never longer than 3 weeks.  Patience.

[tschmidlin]

I think part of my problem is that I keep reading about people getting carbonation in 3-5 days

Are you sure those people aren't talking about force carbonating?  I don't naturally carbonate anymore, but I never got anything carbed that fast.  It was always 2-3 weeks.

I'm one of those people. For some reason my beers are fully carbed within three days at an ambient temp of 68-70. This does not mean they are ready to drink. And they are average strength beers not Imperial this or that or the like.

Anyway I always use table-sugar. I only ever hear problems when people are using corn sugar or dextrose and even DME then "measured" instead of "weighed" the amount of sugar.

My kitchen scale has a resolution of 2g which is close enough for me when priming.

Cool euge, can you tell us what you do to get them carbed so fast?  i can't imagine dextrose would make a difference, it is very easily fermentable, more easily than table sugar.  Do you have a standard yeast you think might be responsible?  Do you bottle quickly so there is a lot of yeast in solution?  Something else?

[euge]

Nope. Nothing special. Nor do I rush things. If it gets colder the beer takes a few days more to reach full carbonation.

[tschmidlin]

ok, thanks   I just never had any carb that fast.  Not even close.  But then it's been more than 10 years since I've bottled with priming sugar, so . . .

[bluesman]

Some important factors that go into bottle carbonation:

1. Having enough residual yeast in suspension (usually not a problem if bottling right after fermentation)
2. Adding a calculated quantity of priming sugar to the beer (roughly 3/4cup sucrose +/- depending on desired volume of CO2)
3. even mixing of priming sugar into beer
4. bottle fermentation at 70F +/-5 for two weeks or longer
5. check bottles before chilling

[jeffy]

There's an old trick that Jeff Renner used to post that describes filling a plastic bottle at bottling time, squeezing the air out and screwing the top back on.  As the beer carbonates the bottle will expand and get more firm so you can observe the level of carbonation taking place.
Also, if you mark the fill level on a few of your bottles with a sharpie, you can actually witness the level of liquid increase as the beer carbonates.
But I haven't bottle-conditioned beer much in years.....

[alcaponejunior]

I just tried a 12oz of my Al's Celebration Ale (see sig) yesterday, and it was definitely carbonated after ten days, but not quite ready yet.  Since that was my first batch, I was mostly just very happy to discover that it came out good!  Note that these are being carbonated using 2/3 cup* of corn sugar, and the temperature is pretty steadily about 70F.  It was obvious that they needed more time to condition though, so be patient. 

I will be waiting until at least 20 days before trying another 12oz.  I just learned in this thread that bigger bottles take a bit longer, so I will wait a little longer on those. 

*we weighed it, not measured, but we weighed out enough for TWO batches, and what I actually used was divided by eye, so it's probably not entirely precise, but it's pretty close.