11
weigh your priming sugar, don't measure the volume
boil it in just enough water to dissolve it for a few minutes
pour that sugar syrup into your bottling bucket
rack the beer onto the sugar mixture
give it a couple gentle stirs with a sanitized spoon
That works for me. Hopefully it will work for you, too!
10
Take a look at this BeerSmith article: http://beersmith.com/blog/2008/06/25/enhancing-beer-head-retention-for-home-brewers/
The article makes the following points:
Foam is the result of CO2 bubbles rising through the beer. These bubbles attach themselves to substances in the beer and form a skin around the bubble
Head stability depends on the presence of ...
10
Here's a list of some common gasses and their solubility in water at standard pressure and various temperatures.
CO2 dissolves ca 3g per gas kg of water at 5°C. Nitrogen is 0.027g for the same conditions, so in round figures about 1/100th the solubility.
A carbonated beer is a supersaturated gas in solution, having more gas dissolved than would be ...
10
Having done both, I can tell you that sugar (corn or table, doesn't matter) is the way to go. It's easy reliable and tasteless. Priming with gyle (the name for what you propose) is uncertain and offers no advantage to your beer.
10
Yes. Priming with sugar would break the reinheitsgeboten.
The way you want to go is to retain unfermented mash and add it when bottling takes place.
There's a really handy calculator right here: https://www.brewersfriend.com/gyle-and-krausen-priming-calculator/
9
TAKE THE STOPPER OUT! THIS IS A SERIOUS ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN!
Unlike glass bottles, glass carboys are not designed to hold pressure.
4 tsp in 1 gallon will produce about about 2.4 volumes of CO2. The pressure created will be significant - at a minimum 22 PSI, but likely more than that, since fermentation proceeds quicker than the CO2 will dissolve, ...
9
Overview
You carbonate partially filled bottles as if the bottle were full of beer, so if you have 1 liter of beer in a 3 liter bottle, you carbonate as if you had 3 liters of beer. Here's why.
The amount of carbonation is measured by the equivalent volumes of CO2 dissolved in the beer. So a beer carbonated to 2.5 vols, has 2.5 times the volume of CO2 ...
9
Yes, this is to be expected and perfectly normal - when you have a half filled container of beer, the carbon dioxide that's dissolved in the beer will come out of the beer to fill the space available, so you have less carbon dioxide in the beer, and less fizz.
You can try keeping the half-filled bottles cool which will retain more carbon dioxide in the ...
9
No. The settled yeast (trub/dregs) from primary shouldn't be included in bottling. There's plenty of yeast in suspension to bottle condition, unless your cold weather was enough to completely crash and fine in primary. But that would need to be below 40°F for a couple days.
8
This does sound like dangerous advice, unless they also tell you at which specific gravity to start bottling. If you bottle to early, you could get bottle bombs, and too late you get flat beer.
If you bottle at a SG close to the expected final gravity then you can reduce the chances of the above from happening. If you were going to use priming, sugar, for 2....
8
Replace the seals. Buying 100 seals from eBay should cost you something like US$10.
I also use swing-top bottles, and my protocol is to replace a seal immediately after opening a bottle that turned out to be undercarbed.
7
My experience has shown that going through the beer out line doesn't change the rate the beer carbs up. Whether using the 'set and forget' process, or the high PSI and shake method. The bubbles coming out the bottom really aren't increasing the surface ratio enough for it to be significant. The bubbles just rush up to the surface.
The downside to the ...
7
Your general understanding is pretty much spot-on. I think the thing to consider here is that your reasoning assumes that half or a third of the priming sugar is meant to yield the same amount of carbonation as it would in the bottle. I'd argue this isn't the case. Notice how recommendations like this keg-underpriming 'common wisdom' usually don't go so far ...
7
I can't imagine anyone suggesting bottling at a FG of 1.042
I would return them to the fermenter and allow fermintation to complete.
Those are bottle bombs. Be careful.
Many yeasts don't survive at 6.5% ABV, but there are plenty that do. Wine yeasts for example.
At 1.042 we would call that a stalled or stuck fermentation, and a more tolerant yeast can be ...
7
Yes you will oxidize the cider (or beer or wine) if you don't use CO2 or some other inert gas like Nitrogen (but that has it's own problems). Oxygen will not "reignite" the yeast. Yeast will happily ferment with CO2 or Helium or Nitrogen or whatever gas you use. Make sure your cider is done fermenting, then put it in the keg. Purge the headspace with CO2. ...
7
You do not want to do this. Carboys are not meant to hold pressure and will break. If you want clearer beer, aging it longer in a carboy and/or using something like gelatin or whirlfloc will greatly aid in clarity.
6
This is possible, but not in a scientifically measurable way.
Try this:
Hold one of your bottles of beer up to the light so you can see the air gap that expands from the top of the bottle down to the top of the beer in the bottle.
Quickly turn the bottle upside down then back again, with a slight amount of force, but no need to shake it.
Observe the air ...
6
My capper does this too. It's not been an issue for our beer. If it was leaking I'd think you might see some evidence around the top.
6
What your describing is volcano bottles. Over carbonation
This is caused by bottle conditioning with too much priming sugar, too much residual sugar or wild yeast infection.
Priming sugar misdose is easily prevented with proper measuring.
Residual sugar is prevented by taking final gravity readings to make sure fermentation is complete instead of a ...
6
Bottle bombs are usually beers that are about 10 gravity points above terminal gravity for standard 12oz bottles, then hit TG in the bottles. So 1.020 SG when 1.010 is TG.
For typical normal carbonation, 3-4 points above TG. Most 5 gallon batches call for about 4oz of monosaccaride priming sugar.
Rather than trying to make bombs and risk a mess and ...
6
If you have added approximately the right amount of priming sugar and your beer is not carbonated at all, your problem probably is not the amount of sugar added.
A common problem is inadequate mixing of the priming sugar in the batch, but this doesn't apply here because you indicate that you added sugar to each bottle individually.
Other potential problems ...
5
It does sound like your priming sugar wasn't mixed very well. That said, if the flat bottles are sweet to the taste there's something else afoot.
When I bottle I usually mix a cup of water with 3/4 cup of corn sugar and stick it in the microwave for a couple minutes to boil it. I then let it cool for a while before pouring the solution into the bottom of ...
5
If you follow a process like this, you won't be far off:
Dilute the syrup to create a 10% solution. E.g. add 10g of syrup to 90g of water and stir well.
Take the specific gravity of the 10% solution, e.g. 1.030
Express this as a fraction of a 10% solution of sucrose, which has specific gravity 1.040. So, our example of 1.030 is .75 the gravity of a 10% ...
5
It's probably just too cool. I had lots of problems with carbonation when I left my bottles in my 65-70 degree basement. In fact, I had one batch where the bottles on the concrete floor did not carbonate but the ones sitting on top of those, off the floor, did carbonate. Eventually, I started putting them in the laundry room on a shelf above the dryer, where ...
5
No personal experience, but I have heard that while this is not what the sodastream is for (instructions say to ONLY carbonate water), it can be done with success.
The method is as follows: get the beer/cider into the soda stream bottle. Get as cold as possible (like 32*F). Attach to Soda Stream. Use ONE 2-second pull of the lever (as opposed to ...
5
I have tried this. My soda stream is still sticky because of it. It is not advised.
5
You're probably not getting fermentation in the bottle.
"make the ginger tea/syrup in a stainless steel pot"
What are you doing in this step? If you are boiling to make a syrup you are killing the ginger plant (bug). It won't be around to make CO2 when you bottle.
"Stir, then immediately bottle the contents."
Are you also adding (boiled) sugar at ...
5
Let's separate this out into two phases: carbonation and dispensing.
Carbonation inside a keg can be done just like carbonation inside a bottle: by the addition of a specific amount of sugar, which will be fermented by the residual yeast, which will create a specific amount of CO₂, measured in "volumes". With external CO₂, however, you can also "force ...
5
Using sugar is easier. There is no risk that you have too much gyle or too little. You can just buy extra sugar and be on the safe side. Gyle needs to be saved in sterile containers (I usually fill a few bottles with gyle while it's still boiling hot, which does the trick) and then kept in the fridge. You can just keep the sugar on the shelf.
You can end up ...
5
Force carbonation is very common for homebrewers. I'd imagine any homebrewer with a kegging setup does force carbonation by default. I would guess, too, that it's much more often than not done without active filtering. Long primary, cold-crashing and careful racking will minimize the amount of yeast transfer for most styles and beers.
There is no signficant ...
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