Priming sugar vs. temperature

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Beer is good

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Hello buddies

I have a question. According to the graph here, the priming sugar I use will change depending on the temperature of my beer. This makes sense, except it seems opposite of what I could expect:

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter11-4.html

I thought that at colder temperatures I would need more sugar, since gas expands as it warms up. But on this chart, it looks like more sugar is required for warmer temperatures. Why is that?
 
It's because more CO2 is absorbed/held in colder temps.

The warmer you ferment, the less CO2 remains in the beer, which means you need more sugar than if you ferment colder.

Said another way. More CO2 is retained in colder temps. So if you ferment cool, you already had more CO2 in suspension that you would if you fermented warmer.

Make sense?
 
Right. But even so, your beer probably was at 66-68 degrees (or more) before packaging, even if you made a lager, so it really doesn't matter. Using .75-1 ounce of priming sugar would be correct in any beer that ever reached 60+ degrees.
 
Thanks that makes sense, it just seemed weird to me.

That was my next question - is that referring to the serving temperature? If I am going to keep my beer in my 40 degree fridge before I drink it, should I add the sugar for 40 degrees?
 
Beer is good said:
Thanks that makes sense, it just seemed weird to me.

That was my next question - is that referring to the serving temperature? If I am going to keep my beer in my 40 degree fridge before I drink it, should I add the sugar for 40 degrees?
Click to expand...

No. You should use the fermentation temperature, or the highest temperature the beer sat at after fermentation.

The reason is that cold beer "holds" onto co2 better than warm beer, and those (stupid) priming calculators try to guestimate that. Forget it, and if you are bottling your beer, use .75-1 ounce by weight of corn sugar per finished gallon of beer. 4-5 ounces of corn sugar, by weight, for a finished five gallon batch is perfect.
 
No, the temp refers to your highest fermentation temp. It is estimating how much CO2 is still in suspension. More residual CO2 means less sugar to carb the rest of the way.
 
I'm also curious about this – specifically, can the beer absorb more CO2 during cold-crashing or other cool conditioning steps?

Or, once active fermentation is done, has it absorbed all it's going to, and you only have to worry about the maxiumum temperature, because it will only ever release CO2 as it gets warmer, and not re-absorb it when you cool it back down?
 
feinbera said:
I'm also curious about this – specifically, can the beer absorb more CO2 during cold-crashing or other cool conditioning steps?
Click to expand...

No. Because- where is the co2 going to come from? Fermentation produces lots of c02, which exits out the airlock. But once fermentation is finished, and little to no c02 is produced, it won't magically appear.
 
Yooper said:
No. You should use the fermentation temperature, or the highest temperature the beer sat at after fermentation.

The reason is that cold beer "holds" onto co2 better than warm beer, and those (stupid) priming calculators try to guestimate that. Forget it, and if you are bottling your beer, use .75-1 ounce by weight of corn sugar per finished gallon of beer. 4-5 ounces of corn sugar, by weight, for a finished five gallon batch is perfect.
Click to expand...

Wow, so they are actually talking about CO2 that is just left in the beer from being fermented? Ok now I understand a lot better. I will bottle at 75f or so, so that is the temperature that would make sense to use, but I will just stick to your guideline 4-5oz/5gal.

Thanks for helping me understand. I did not know they were considering residual CO2 just left in the beer from fermentation :drunk:
 
Beer is good said:
Wow, so they are actually talking about CO2 that is just left in the beer from being fermented? Ok now I understand a lot better. I will bottle at 75f or so, so that is the temperature that would make sense to use, but I will just stick to your guideline 4-5oz/5gal.

Thanks for helping me understand. I did not know they were considering residual CO2 just left in the beer from fermentation :drunk:
Click to expand...

The residual CO2 can be close to 1 volume, depending on your temperature. So it can be significant! Yooper's point is valid though; racking to a secondary, bumping the fermenter, siphoning to a bottling bucket, filling bottles, all of these things knock some CO2 out of solution. So at the end of the day, it's just a guess.
 

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