Hot answers tagged bottle-conditioning
13
The caps are not perfectly smooth - they contain nucleation points, imperfections or dirt along the surface, where a bubble could form (similar to how boils are formed at nucleation points when heating water). As the cold water heats up, dissolved gasses are forced out of solution. Some of this gas dissipates, but some of it will attach to the nucleation ...
8
Yeast work better at warmer temps, and at this point you want the yeast to ferment the priming and carb your beer. That means you should keep the beer around 70-75°F (21-24°C) while you're trying to carb it. Once it's carbed, putting it in the fridge will not only aid the dissolution of CO2 into the beer, but will also retard staling. At this point, your ...
5
One of three things:
Incomplete fermentation prior to bottling... If the beer wasn't completely done before bottling residual sugar (plus priming sugar) is over carbonating the beer.
Too much priming sugar. Re-examine how much you used. Consider that if the beer was significantly cool prior to bottling that a fair amount of CO2 would have been already ...
4
One possibility is uneven blending of the beer and priming sugar solution. Did you mix the sugar/water solution yourself, or just let it mix naturally from the beer being racked on top? Depending upon how viscous it is, it can sit at the bottom of the fermenting bucket even though the beer is swirling. This means you end up with some bottles undercarbonated, ...
3
A typical 20 liter batch uses around 120g of table sugar, or 6g per liter.
One teaspoon of sugar is about 4.2g. So when you used 0.5tsp in 750ml that's 2.1/0.750 = 2.8 grams per liter, which is less than half the typical 6 grams per liter. For 1.5tsp in 1250ml, that's 1.5*4.2/1.25 = 5g/l so much closer, but still undercarbonated - it's quite hard to measure ...
3
One week is Usually enough time to finish carbonating, however I've found that you get much better results if you wait at least two weeks.
Bottle bombs are typically the result of one of three things
Incomplete Fermentation
Infection
Too much bottling sugar
If you made sure fermentation was complete, had no signs of infection and made sure you used the ...
3
Congratulations!
1) Eventually, yes, but it's probably worth giving the bottles a bit of agitation to mix it up more quickly.
2) Count on a good 2-3 weeks, generally speaking.
3) That depends on your sanitizer. If you are using a standard sanitizer like StarSan, you can proceed while the bottles are still wet.
2
The amount of time carbonation takes can vary. 1 week is a very short time and I'm not too surprised by the result you found. Make sure to store the bottles around 70F to speed thing up. As to the off flavor, there's no way we can tell unless you can describe it better. Take a look at this How to Brew troubleshooting
2
CO₂ solubility is a function of temperature. If you can force carbonate, temperature and pressure can be varied in relation to each other to obtain a particular level of carbonation (generally expressed in the number of volumes of CO₂ dissolved into the beer).
When you bottle-prime, you've added a fixed amount of sugar, which means a fixed amount of CO₂. ...
2
The metallic/chemical taste to me suggests contamination at the bottle level. Maybe some of these were insufficiently cleaned or sterilized. The wrong microbes could also impact the flavor by breaking down the flavors you want into ones you don't. Is there any possibility you put more care into cleaning the longer bottles (as they would be possibly more ...
2
Sometimes when opening a beer to early after bottling, it will foam, and taste flat.
Especially when you have high carbonation. 5 oz in 5 gallons equals a co2 volume of 2.9 which is quite high for an american ale.
When I bottle my belgian ales I usually have a carbonation around 3.
These will foam if opened too early but after a few weeks they will have a ...
2
If the beer has not fermented in the 3 weeks since bottling, it's not likely to kick off any time soon.
Assuming that the beer is not excessively high in alcohol, you should add more yeast to the bottles to initiate fermentation. Get yourself a packet of dry yeast (check the manufacture date or expiry date to be sure it's fresh yeast). Uncap the bottles ...
2
I believe you are detecting the sulfur produced by the yeast. Hefe or Wit yeast in wheat beers can absolutely produce this compound, so its not unusual to encounter.
I've had it appear a few times before, and I believe it fades out over time. I mostly keg, but I can recall getting strong sulfur production in a Hefe with WLP351, which was bottled and seemed ...
1
The three major factors that affect shelf life are sanitation, oxidation, and storage conditions.
Make sure everything is sanitized post-boil. If you need to touch a hose, wash your hands with anti-bacterial soap, etc. Fermenters, bottles, racking canes, tubing, caps -- everything should be sanitized immediately prior to use. A minor infection might not ...
1
I would just leave it. The headspace is full of oxygen - even a gentle shake is enough to increase oxygen absorbtion into the beer. I would simply leave the beer standing as it is, which exposes the smallest surface area to oxygen. Oxygen uptake leads to sherry/cardboard flavours later, or just generally dulling of the beer flavor and faster staling.
The ...
1
FWIW ... I used to make root beer from scratch, using either champagne or ale yeast for carbonation. SWMBO used to open the bale-top bottles with a bit too much of a flourish, and they would gush every time. I would open them very gently, very slowly, with no problem. So I had to train her to take it easy, because it seemed obvious to me that popping the ...
1
Being fairly lazy myself, I would use Carbonation Tabs, if I were you.
http://www.monsterbrew.com/Prod_CarbonationTabs.cfm
You just pop the right # of tabs into the bottle, then fill it up with beer.
My concern with the syringe method is that you could mistake Precision for Accuracy. By that, I mean that you will do the math to get the exact # of ...
1
I realize this is answered, but if the beer is tasted better later, I doubt it's an infection. This might be totally off-base, but when you move to a keg and refrigerate, unless you filtered before transferring, the remaining yeast and sediment particles are going to settle to the bottom of the keg. The dip tube on a corny keg is pulling from the bottom, so ...
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