Bottle carbonation

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Duncan Dobbin

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I cracked open a bottle of my first homebrew at the weekend, after two weeks in the bottle. There was some carbonation, and a definite fizz on opening, but the head quickly dissipated and the beer was quite flat. It was perfectly drinkable, but I was wondering if I can expect more carbonation after another week or so? The bottles are stored in boxes in a fairly warm room between 18-20 degrees C. Or would it be better to put these somewhere warmer for a week? To carbonate I dissolved priming sugar in boiling water, cooled a little and added this to the bottling bucket before racking from the FV. Are carbonation drops more reliable for future brews?

Many thanks!
 
I think there are a few things to consider, if you’re doing all grain then the malt itself matters, I commonly use carapils and dextrin malts as they add “head” have a look here. https://byo.com/article/fabulous-foam/
It could be the amount of priming sugar used, maybe too little, there’s a calculator on brewersfriend website that gives a good guide on the amount to use depending on beer style and volume.
My experience on how long it takes to carbonate in the bottle heavily depends on temperature and time. I don’t cold crash the FV anymore, I rack to a bottling bucket, then bottle and keep them at room temperature for a week to carbonate then into cold store which cold crashes in the bottle. then when I open there’s a decent fiz and the beer is well carbonated. I did an experiment this weekend, bottled on Saturday, opened a bottle on Monday, so just a couple of days, to find as good a fizz as I get leaving for a weeek, I put this down to not cold crashing which will dump a lot of the yeast, and keeping the bottles at room temperature. I suspect in your case it may be down to the amount of sugar used or grain bill. After two weeks at room temperature your yeast would have eaten all the priming sugar, it probably does this within the first few days.
 
I usually crash mine,some for up to a week and never find this affects carbonation. My bitters and British style ales get a lower dose of priming sugar of around 90g for 23l,AIPA get a bit more at 120g and the odd wheat beers I do are more..160g I think. I've tried torrified wheat,carapils and flaked barley for head retention and have put a couple of hundred grammes of flaked barley in my last few brews as it's cheap and works.
How clean your glass is can also affect the head on your beer.
 
You have highlighted two issues, carbonation and head retention.
On carbonation, if you have sufficient yeast in the beer at packaging time (usually anything above almost clear is enough), if the carbing is carried out above about 18*C, then two weeks should be long enough for all of the priming sugar to be consumed. I use PET bottles and PBs and know that most of my beers have carbed up within a week at the most. So the only thing left is the quantity of sugar used. I suggest you use this
https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/
Next there is, in my opinion, no need to use anything other than table sugar for priming. It is readily available, cheap, predictable and can be easily and accurately measured out. Conversely carbonation drops are the opposite, so my advice is don't use them.
And as you use a bottling bucket and add sugar solution, my suggestion is to put the solution in first then add the beer to get better mixing.
On head retention brewers often add speciality grains to improve this, including, for example, torrified wheat. If you are all grain then you can add these grains easily, but if kit brewing there is not a lot you can do other than add these grains via a steep or through a small mash. Finally if you leave your beer to condition longer this might improve head retention, something to do with smaller bubble size I have read on here.
PS
+1 on @Clint comment about clean glasses. If you can see tiny bubbles on the wall of your glass when there is beer in it, your glass is not clean.
 
I usually crash mine,some for up to a week and never find this affects carbonation. My bitters and British style ales get a lower dose of priming sugar of around 90g for 23l,AIPA get a bit more at 120g and the odd wheat beers I do are more..160g I think. I've tried torrified wheat,carapils and flaked barley for head retention and have put a couple of hundred grammes of flaked barley in my last few brews as it's cheap and works.
How clean your glass is can also affect the head on your beer.

That's interesting to hear.. my rationale for not cold crashing is that I often use yeast with high flocculation characteristics so it drops out of suspension when fermentation done, cold crashing would increase this further so reducing the amount carried forward into the bottle. When I cold crashed for 48 hours on a couple of occasions I found that carbonisation was poor, no real head even after a couple of weeks, perhaps it would be better with medium flocculation yeast. So I changed to using Dextrin malt in most of my IPA's and leaving bottles at room temperature, really works but I do get a layer of yeast/sediment in every bottle. I'm putting about 120G sugar in.
 
Last weekend I cracked open two different wheat beers made with the same wheat, same yeast and same bottling method and carbonation (table sugar). The Weissbier from December and carbonated for 2 weeks before being sat in a garage at between 0-10°C until now had a wonderful creamy head with small densely packed bubbles whereas the Dunkelweizen made in February, carbonated for 2 weeks then stored cool for only a few days had much larger bubbles like you get in lemonade. This still created a head but it didn't last as long.

I assume there is some form of co2 absorbing going on and further conditioning that improves the head over time.
 
Thanks all. I have a feeling that the yeast that came with the kit was a little old, as there was not a particularly vigorous fermentation. I wonder if it's just a case of too much yeast dying off before bottling meaning that there is not much left to consume the sugar?
 
Thanks all. I have a feeling that the yeast that came with the kit was a little old, as there was not a particularly vigorous fermentation. I wonder if it's just a case of too much yeast dying off before bottling meaning that there is not much left to consume the sugar?
If the yeast was healthy enough to ferment the beer down to the expected FG then it should be able to ferment the priming sugar, even if the beer was nearly clear at packaging.
Anyway after all this theory what was the quantity of priming sugar you added to your beer i.e. weightt of sugar to volume of beer?
 
I have found most of my beers carbonate in under a week but 1 took 3 weeks for no obvious reason.
 
There was 140g of priming sugar, diluted into a small saucepan of boiling water. The total volume of wort was just under 18 litres.
If by wort you mean beer that went into the bottles that should give you 2.8 vols. If you mean start volume the carbing will be even higher. Either way thats 'quite fizzy'.
Assuming all your bottles are the same (have you opened another to test?) I would leave them another week in the warm and then open another and see if there is any change.
 
I have taken one case and put it in the airing cupboard (not overly warm but warmer than the utility room where the other case is), to see if there is any difference between the two cases in a week or so. I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for all the replies!
 
Well I opened a couple more this weekend, one from the airing cupboard and the other from the utility room, and both were exactly the same. The carbonation hadn't really changed from last week. Think I'm going to put this one down to experience. I still have some drinkable beer so not all bad! AG brew next for me, so no doubt I will have a host of new problems to post about! Thanks again for all the input on this one.
 
I've had similar issues in the past and have given the bottles a quick shake to mix the yeast up again. Adds a few days to them clearing but seems to do the trick.
 
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