Hot answers tagged co2
7
What was the starting gravity and ending gravity? Did you confirm that fermentation had completed before bottling?
6g/litre should give around 2.5 volumes of CO2, depending on the final temperature of the beer, according to this tool. That's about right for a Belgian ale.
I think your problem is most likely that you bottled the beer before it had finished ...
6
The yeast may still be working, and even if they aren't, CO2 may still be coming out of solution from temperature changes or agitation. Glass carboys are not meant to hold pressure, and they fail in a very dramatic and possibly dangerous way. Use an airlock for safety.
A keg designed to hold pressure is a fine alternative. You can even keep it under ...
5
It's fine to disconnect, or you can leave it connected. In fact, you have 3 choices:
If you have a need to remove the CO2 tank now, you can do that, and connect up again 5 days before you need the beer.
Alternatively, leave the CO2 connected now for 5 days to fully carbonate the beer and then disconnect. The beer will stay carbonated and will be ready ...
5
I doubt anyone has tried this on a normal home brew scale because your "graduated cylinder/bottle" would need to hold 100 or 200 gallons of CO2 to capture all the CO2 for a batch. Even if you found a way to record the volume and reset, you still would need quite a large vessel during the most active stages of fermentation. You would also have the problem ...
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
If you repeat the measurement a little later or after more shaking and the head pressure is still the same then you have achieved equilibrium and you can assumption about the volumes based on measured temp and PSI are indeed correct.
If the pressure has dropped then the beer is still absorbing CO2, add more and keep going.
BTW: This is the coolest thing I ...
4
A table like that will show you the volumes of CO2 when the beer and headspace have reached equilibrium. If you only had the beer pressurized for a couple hours, the CO2 may not have fully dissolved.
If you check the pressure later and it's stable at 22.5 PSI, that means it's at equilibrium (and has about 2.7 volumes of CO2). If the pressure has gone down, ...
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
You absolutely do not need an airlock for secondary, assuming you wait til fermentation is done. I've sealed a carboy with a stopper many times for a secondary, although these days I usually use foil. If the beer is still outgassing, you will have a bit more dissolved CO2 in it, but not enough to worry about the carboy exploding. A keg also works really ...
3
It sounds like what you're doing is correct. (And I guess you've tried turning it all the way to the right - clockwise?)
The relief valve can be quite sensitive on some regulators, causing it to fire a little prematurely, so it might have been that, but for the fact that you say the dial jumps to 60 psi.
I would double check that the relief lock isn't ...
3
For a standard 5gal(18.9 litre) carboy fermented to 12% alcohol content by weight (not volume, 14.5% by volume) approx 1100 litres (264 gallons) of CO2 at 1 atm, 68F. But if you knew that, you would also know that 2.268 kg of ethanol had been produced allowing the simple math to calculate % alcohol by either weight or volume.
The prediction, assuming 100% ...
3
I think Tallie has it right. It's likely a trade-off between stressing the yeast with CO2 and having oxidized beer. I would add that degassing or adding O2 after fermentation has started also introduces a mostly unnecessary step, creating more work for the brewer and increasing the risk of contamination.
Depending on how early in fermentation we're ...
3
In a recent BeerSmith podcast Michael Fairbrother from Moonlight Meadery talks about degassing mead during fermentation (at about 17:45 in the YouTube video), and alludes that unlike beer, mead and wine can handle additional oxygen after fermentation begins.
As we know, depending on the stage of fermentation, oxygen in beer can be detrimental. So I guess ...
3
It's actually kind of difficult to use those kegs for serving, which is why you'll generally see homebrewers using 5 gal. keg for serving and reworking the 1/2 bbl. kegs into kettles. To use the to serve, you need to remove the ring and spear, clean them, and then fill them. You need to get the appropriate fittings for gas and serving. You might want to ...
2
Force carbonating is the main reason you'd want to have a dual regulator, but I'd rather have two co2 tanks, each with their own regulator. I use one tank for force carbonating 1-2 kegs, and I have another tank for serving 3 kegs. I prefer this set up because when one tank is empty, I can easily switch over to the other tank. No need to suffer without beer ...
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
The link to the tubing you posted says the tubing rating is 250psi, and a barb with a clamp would surely tolerate at least 60psi, but I don't think figuring out the maximum pressure the system can safely handle is the way to go.
Instead, ensure that your adjustable valve has a maximum pressure so that it that opens when the pressure goes above a threshold ...
2
The excess foam is because there's too much pressure. There are two things I would try. The first is easy - turn off the CO2 and let the pressure in the keg push the beer out. If the sanke coupler has a release valve, you can use that to bleed off the excess CO2.* Once you have released the pressure and your problem should go away. Once it goes down, turn ...
1
In addition to the comments regarding pressure (which I agree is the most likely cause; Even if you've turned down the pressure, the actual pressure in the keg won't go down until it's released through the tap or a relief valve), I'd also ask what the conditions of your beer line are. The line & faucet should be cleaned regularly with cleaner (something ...
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
Pressure will attempt to equalize. By that I mean if you have one container with PSI of 10 and a PSI of 15 in another, then pressure will become 12.5 in both containers. In doing so, the contents (beer) will end up traveling to the vessel of lower pressure (the CO2 regulator) from the vessel of higher pressure (the keg).
1
Beer will come out of the gas line when both of these conditions occur:
The pressure in the keg is higher than whatever's on the other side of the gas line.
There is beer in the gas dip tube or post (either because you've overfilled the keg or because the keg was shaken or lay on its side).
I once over-filled a keg such that the gas dip tube was partly ...
1
That dual regulator is only necessary if you want beers at different carb levels. For the most part though I have never needed that set up. I have a simple single regulator and a 4 point manifold. Each point has its own on off switch. So when I want to dispense beer they are all open, but if I am carbing up a new beer, I close down three of them and carb ...
1
You have multiple effects at work here:
For one, the carbonation is about absorbing CO2 into the beer. This process lowers the CO2 pressure in the keg.
The second point is, that while cooling the beer and the tank, you make the beer able to absorb more CO2, while also reducing the volume of the gas - both in the keg and in the tank. That will lead to a ...
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