carbonation problems?

so here's my recipe:

6lbs alfalfa or wildflower honey
1 cup buckwheat honey, 1/2 cup at bottling
3.3 sorghum LME
1/2 cup of molasses
orange peels and juice of 4 oranges
1/2 cup corriander\
Danstar nottingham ale yeast

heated the must/wort just enough to get the bitterness of the hops and bring out the flavour of the corriander.

S.G. 1.060 or so, fermentation was about a smooth sailing as it can go and pretty much fermented to 1.003 within a week. Racked into secondary for 10 days to 2 weeks then bottled with 1/2 cup of buckwheat honey/water into bottling bucket. Tried a bottle a week after bottling, this bottle i added about 1/8tsp of corn sugar because i knew i would be trying this one early so i wanted to make sure it was carbonated. I hit the nail on the head with this "braggot style" mead. It was exactly how i wanted it to turn out and it was only about a month old. It smelt amazing and tasted perfect to me anyway. for the next week I was craving this beverage all the time. The next time I had one, it was flat as apple juice and we all know how good flat beers are. I had 10 or so that i had bottled in the grolsch style bottles so decided to open them up and put a 1/4 tsp of corn sugar in each bottle then let them sit for another week even putting a little space heater on them to kickstart the yeast. Tried a week or so later and still flat.

I had made another batch of this because i loved the first bottle i cracked open so much and wanted enough for summer. Let it sit in the primary for a week and a half then racked and with what was left in the bucket after racking most of it into a secondary. just to test, i put the leftover in 2 grolsch bottles and primed them with corn sugar again just to see if this batch would carbonate as it had only been a week and a half so surely the yeast wouldn't be dead and not have a problem eating the sugar enough to carbonate the 2 bottles.

Now i ask, why the H is this not carbonating?? i didn't want to add more yeast at bottling and don't want to force carbonate through kegging, so while my 2nd batch is in the secondary as i write this, what can i do different? i've heard that it takes up to a month or so to carbonate but why did my first bottle from the first batch work out so perfectly and the rest didn't?

sorry for the length of this post.. can't wait to hear your answers/opinions on this.. thanks in advance!!

it is a 5 gallon batch, and i'm going on Ken Schram's book in regards to the 1/2 cup of honey to prime but i will definitely be doing at least a cup on this second batch. What really gets me is the fact that that first bottle was perfectly carbonated at only 6 days after bottling (this is the only bottle that i initially added corn sugar too as well as the 1/2 c of honey added to the batch, as i knew that this was a test bottle that i would sample within the next week). It tasted amazing and i couldn't get over the smell of the empty bottle the whole night and next day. I found myself taking whiffs of the empty every so often, being so impressed with how it turned out. The second bottle i tried had 2 weeks in the bottle and was as flat as could be and didn't even taste half as good as the first... i guess that's what carbonation does for a beer. I've had 7 or so bottles now, including the ones that i added extra corn sugar too and not a damn bubble to be seen, (its been approx 3 weeks since bottling). The only thing i can think of would be that as i dry hopped in the secondary, the hop pellets gathered to the top of the carboy and i don't think i even stirred or swirled it once to degas while it was in there for around a week so is it possible that the CO2 got trapped and killed the remaining yeast?

Corn sugar, from what i've read is the most fermentable. Some claims have been close to 100% that i've seen. I will give it another week or so to see if they dummy up and carbonate or else i'll have to make a starter and over the course a few days slowly add in some of the mead/braggot to the yeast to get them accustomed to their new environment. I'll use a tincture with dropper to add to the bottles and hope that works... i really did not want to go this route and open up all the bottles, but if i have to, I have to...

Side note: I have a gluten sensitivity and miss beer, (i do have an occasional "real beer"), but I wanted to make a beer that i could not bad about drinking over the spring and summer. Not having used any malted grains in this beverage, i must say that (the one bottle i had that was carbonated), was the best gluten free drink i have ever tasted and would actually prefer it over most beer's i have tried. The next time i make this recipe, I will be experimenting in malting my own grains.. either buckwheat or amaranth or quinoa or a combo of each, in hopes of getting more head retention and adding some more body and maybe a bit more unfermentable sugars.

Chevette Girl if you are ever to make this, the only thing i would recommend to you would be to use more buckwheat honey than i did.. and to let me know how it turns out

Akueck, i was worried about the possibility of not mixing it thoroughly enough right after i bottled and the next day i had some regrets, but i did put in the priming solution into a bottling bucket first, then racked onto it. I then put the lid on the bucket and then gave it a gentle shake/swirl motion as my spoon was not sanitized at that moment i needed it. So I know i could of probably done a better job of mixing had i not been to lazy to sanitize my spoon.. Oh hindsight is a b!tch.

the sorghum is like a grassy light tasting molasses with the consistency of really thick corn syrup. I have never tasted barly malt by itself so i can't comment there.

I don't have my log in front of me but I heated the sorghum in hot water, probably a 2.5 gallon stockpot at a low boil or just below the boiling point because I don't think you need to do any extreme heating. I added the molasses, buckwheat honey, orange peels, and corriander with hop additions every so often. I only heated for 40 or so minutes just enough time to infuse the corriander and peels and hops. I did this recipe twice with slight tweaks mainly because i couldn't get the same hops i had used in the previous batch. I think i used centennial and cascade the first time (staggering 1/2oz every 10-15 min and then dry hopping with 1/2 oz of the cascade for 5-7days in secondary. This time I used E.S. Goldings and cluster and dry hopped with a full ounce and its been a week in the secondary as of now. I used approx 3oz of hops in total, being low-mid alpha acid and they were added in the last half of the heating so i didn't get anything too bitter with this light bodied braggot. And now i know to use a cup of primer (buckwheat honey for maybe a little extra malty character) instead of the 1/2 cup that i used previously.

that sweet potato beer sounds fascinating!! I can't even imagine how to start to even consider how that tastes... and good call on the sorghum having a "sour twang" to it. Its not overbearing by any means and i think the honey helps cancel that characteristic out.