What carbonation volume for Belgian tripel?

[Monkhouse]

I’m scratching my head with how much sugar per 500ml bottle I should be adding for my 10% Belgian tripel.
I’ll be using cbc-1 bottling yeast and can’t decide whether to just add a carb drop 3.3g per bottle or to add loose sugar at a greater amount, like 4g or something. It’s a 28 litre batch.
Don’t want it to be under carbed seeing as it’s a Belgian..
Cheers

 

[Clint]

Is the calc on the forum any use?
I've had a quick look..top end for Belgian is 2.4 vols of c02, I've put 2.2 in for 23 litres as a starting point which gives 123g or so of sugar for the lot. So at 500ml,divide 123g by 46 (x 500ml),which,I think was 2.6g approx per bottle. Or I might have got it dreadfully wrong,which wouldn't be a surprise!

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

Oh dear that's terrible sorry. But for a Tripel the ideal carbonation is between 2.5 and 3.4 vol.

With a peak ferm temp of about 24c, it's saying in 28L you need 246g of table sugar for 3 volumes.

246 / 56 bottles = 4.39g

 

[YeastFace]

Strong Belgians should be 3+ vols imho, but depends on what bottles you are using.

Also, 500ml of 10.5% is a brave choice

 

[Monkhouse]

Is the calc on the forum any use?
I've had a quick look..top end for Belgian is 2.4 vols of c02, I've put 2.2 in for 23 litres as a starting point which gives 123g or so of sugar for the lot. So at 500ml,divide 123g by 46 (x 500ml),which,I think was 2.6g approx per bottle. Or I might have got it dreadfully wrong,which wouldn't be a surprise!

Yeah it’s confusing though as 1.9-2.4 is quite low for a Belgian, I’m sure that’s been put in wrong! If you Google carbonation for a tripel it says 2.4-3 so that’s quite a bit higher. I just wanted other brewers experience on the matter.

 

[Monkhouse]

Strong Belgians should be 3+ vols imho, but depends on what bottles you are using.

Also, 500ml of 10.5% is a brave choice

The bottles are mcewans champion bottles, they weight about 305g each.
Wouldn’t want any gushers though, isn’t 3 volumes a risk of this?
Btw, my Belgian quad is 12.5% and that’s in 500ml bottles too

 

[Clint]

My SAISON was carbed at 2.4 and it was very lively.

 

[Monkhouse]

View attachment 92519

My SAISON was carbed at 2.4 and it was very lively.

This is interesting do different factors influence the final carbonation of the beer other than the actual sugar content added?

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Try this calculator from @doug293cz on the us homebrew forum.
Works with pressure fermentation as well.
I use champagne bottles either 750ml ideal for sharing. Or 375ml these both cope with up to 6 vols.
I carb my Belgians to 3.5 vols with additional sugar to the spunded ferment pressure.
@Clint it's worth you looking at the FG of your conditioned saison as it may well be lower than the bottling FG. Saison yeast will patiently chew through other sugars after you thought it was finished and so your carbonation will be higher.
Using a partly filled pet bottle with a carbonation cap on might allow you to test the real pressure in a bottled batch. But you might need a primed gauge and tubing to compensate for volume loss in tubing at the time of testing. Would need a good understanding of physics to confirm this and I would ask on the US forum re this. However I'm not inclined as the calculator and my bottles have been reliable.

 

[Agentgonzo]

My SAISON was carbed at 2.4 and it was very lively.

Interesting, was that a measured volume of CO2, or "I put in enough sugar from a calculator to theoretically bring it up to 2.4 volumes"? If it's the latter, there could have been residual sugar in the beer that meant your actual carbonation was higher than 2.4.

This is interesting do different factors influence the final carbonation of the beer other than the actual sugar content added?

Thinking about the science of it, I can't see the reason for different styles resulting in different levels of carbonation. Temperature will affect the apparent fizziness of the beer though.

 

[Clint]

I added what the calc said .

 

[RoomWithABrew]

I added what the calc said .

It's the uncalculated residual ferment sugar that could come into play.

 

[Clint]

So...when I take the fg of the SAISON and its stable for a couple of days,that isn't really the fg?

 

[Agentgonzo]

So...when I take the fg of the SAISON and its stable for a couple of days,that isn't really the fg?

It depends on how stable it is. I've had quite a few brews (both saison and not saison) where the FG has appeared stable, but has continued to drop very slowly over the course of a few weeks by 1 SG point every few days. I never noticed it before a floating hydrometer. Air lock continued to bubble once every 5 mins or so over the course of a week.

This can happen especially with diastatic yeasts (like saison) in my experience.
This is my latest graph (the actual figures are way off, but it shows a comparative drop by 2 SG points over a week).

Given that it's about 2 SG points per volume of CO2, a very small an almost unnoticeable drop in SG can result in significant overcarbonation. So from my graph above, the residual sugar between the 21st and 29th of November would equate to about 1 volume of CO2

 

[Clint]

So when would you make the decision to bottle?

 

[Twopan]

I bottle all my Belgians at 2.2 volumes. Tastes right to me, although feedback I received on my dubbel in the dark beers competition, was that it was slightly over carbonated for a dubbel. I usually bottle when FG has been stable for 2+ days but don't know whether I'm getting some residual fermentation in the bottle. Anyway, best technique IMHO is to rack off the brew into a new vessel and mix in the required weight of dextrose which has been boiled briefly ( and cooled) in 200ml of bottled water. I always use the priming calculator at Brewers Friend.

 

[Agentgonzo]

So when would you make the decision to bottle?

If you're happy with how it's turning out at the moment, keep doing what you're doing.

I normally make the decision to bottle at or after the 2 week mark, or when my ispindel graph is truly flat. Or if it's still doing its gentle decline and I want it in bottles I just reduce the priming sugar.

It's not like I can really tell between 2.2 volumes and 2.6 volumes anyway

 

[chthon]

Abbey beers I carbonate at 2.8 volumes, saisons at 3 volumes, I once carbonated a weizen at 4 volumes (I have the correct bottles for this).

British styles I carbonate at 2.2 volumes, bock I carbonate at 2.4 volumes.