Carbonation

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blackerdave

Carbonation

Post by blackerdave » Fri Jan 27, 2017 7:08 am

I put a woodfordes admirals reserve on 5 week ago. Left it in the fermenter for 2 weeks and for some stupid reason when I went to bottle the beer I forgot to prime the bottles and how I do not now ha ha! Anyway I decided to open a few after 3 week in the bottle and to my surprise they have carbonated really well with a fantastic head and it tastes bang on. I was expecting them to be flat, can anyone tell me why they have carbonated so well when I didn't put any priming sugar in?
Cheers

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Exiled Bradfordian

Re: Carbonation

Post by Exiled Bradfordian » Fri Jan 27, 2017 8:07 am

Sounds like your primary fermentation didn't quite finish. Either that or you did prime and you forgot about it...

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Kev888
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Re: Carbonation

Post by Kev888 » Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:16 am

Sometimes the fermentation comes to a very gradual halt; the last stages can be very slow, making it seem like FG has been reached when it hasn't quite. Two weeks would normally be sufficient and kit yeast are usually quite robust, but various things can slow the fermentation down. e.g. If the temperature was a bit cool or unstable, if the yeast were not entirely happy, or if the wort was of high gravity and/or containing more complex sugars. In extreme cases, the fermentation can even stutter/stop prematurely and then re-start later.

If you measure the gravity of your beer then it helps to determine if the fermentation ended as normal; by being of a reasonable finishing gravity and also by no longer changing. If you brew the same beer regularly, you can also build up a picture of what gravities are normal. It can still trick you very slightly, but usually not to any large degree (unless an infection or something causes abnormal behaviour).

Bottling/kegging before Final Gravity instead of priming is actually done on purpose by some brewers, so theres nothing wrong with doing this. However, its a much trickier approach; you need to be 'very' certain of what the FG will be in order to keg at the right time - otherwise the amount of carbonation can be wildly inconsistent; creating bottle-bombs is a greater possibility.
Kev

blackerdave

Re: Carbonation

Post by blackerdave » Fri Jan 27, 2017 12:25 pm

Kev888 wrote:Sometimes the fermentation comes to a very gradual halt; the last stages can be very slow, making it seem like FG has been reached when it hasn't quite. Two weeks would normally be sufficient and kit yeast are usually quite robust, but various things can slow the fermentation down. e.g. If the temperature was a bit cool or unstable, if the yeast were not entirely happy, or if the wort was of high gravity and/or containing more complex sugars. In extreme cases, the fermentation can even stutter/stop prematurely and then re-start later.

If you measure the gravity of your beer then it helps to determine if the fermentation ended as normal; by being of a reasonable finishing gravity and also by no longer changing. If you brew the same beer regularly, you can also build up a picture of what gravities are normal. It can still trick you very slightly, but usually not to any large degree (unless an infection or something causes abnormal behaviour).

Bottling/kegging before Final Gravity instead of priming is actually done on purpose by some brewers, so theres nothing wrong with doing this. However, its a much trickier approach; you need to be 'very' certain of what the FG will be in order to keg at the right time - otherwise the amount of carbonation can be wildly inconsistent; creating bottle-bombs is a greater possibility.
I always bottle my beer when it's had the same fg reading with my hydrometer for 3 consecutive days, is this correct? Also I have never had an fg reading below 1012 no matter which kit I do and they have always been great beers. Do you know the reasons why I never get below 1012?
Thanks

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Kev888
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Re: Carbonation

Post by Kev888 » Fri Jan 27, 2017 12:49 pm

Being the same for 3 days is usually a good indicator that it has more or less stopped, although in practice it can still be going too slowly to tell the difference which is probably why you got some carbonation in the bottle. In an ideal world, it would be good to mature for a bit in bulk (such as in a keg or secondary fermenter) before bottling, which would also allow more time for the FG to be established, you could find it drops another point or so in time, but I appreciate not everyone has the time or space for such things.

1.012 after two weeks is perfectly reasonable for a mostly/wholly malt kit brew. If you used sugar instead of some malt it would be lower, but for flavour/mouthfeel thats not necessarily a good thing in normal gravity beers.

But if you feel it is being tardy or should be lower then you could check that the fermentation isn't cooling down too much at the end - as activity subsides then the self-heating effect of the fermentation also drops off, and yeast work more slowly when cooler and close to FG.
Kev

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