Too early to bottle?

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Turkeyfoot Jr.

Turkeyfoot Jr.

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I have a hefe that's been in the primary for 15 days. Checked the gravity yesterday and it's at 1.014, down from a OG of 1.054. Checked the airlock just now and I'm getting bubbles every minute and a half. I wanted to bottle tonight but I don't want bottle bombs. Think she's ready or needs a couple more days?
 
Roterdrache said:
I have a hefe that's been in the primary for 15 days. Checked the gravity yesterday and it's at 1.014, down from a OG of 1.054. Checked the airlock just now and I'm getting bubbles every minute and a half. I wanted to bottle tonight but I don't want bottle bombs. Think she's ready or needs a couple more days?
Click to expand...

Take a gravity reading. Then take another one 3 days later. If your gravity is static, it's okay to bottle. If it's dynamic, then it needs more time.
 
Well, either divine intervention is at play thus allowing my beer to UN-ferment some of the sugars it had already fermented or I read my hydrometer wrong yesterday. Took a reading this evening and it's at 1.016 with the adjustment for temp. I'm going to assume the latter and say that my beer was 1.016 yesterday as well but I'm going to leave it until tomorrow, check again and if I'm still at 1.016 go ahead and bottle. Oh, and my god does it taste good right now. I've got to be careful, I almost took another "sample" so that I could "measure" it one more time. LOL!
 
Alright, checked my SG and I'm dead on 1.016 still so I'm moving ahead with bottling.

I'm changing things up a bit with this batch and using the priming sugar tables from BYO but I'm a little concerned about the amount of corn sugar that it's telling me to use. Here's what I have:

The beer's a wheat so my volume of CO2 should be 2.8-5.1.
The beer's at roughly 71F right now so I have .807 volumes of residual CO2.
I decided to shoot for middle of the road and go for 3.9 volumes of CO2 in the final beer. 3.9 - 0.807 = 3.093 volumes of CO2 that I need to make up with corn sugar.
In checking the chart of corn sugar (glucose monohydrate) I would need NINE ounces of corn sugar to get 3.05 volumes of CO2 which would be close enough in my book.

NINE ounces of corn sugar, can that be right? I'm really hoping my math is wrong somewhere and I'm a little nervous if it isn't.

The link to the charts is here:

http://byo.com/referenceguide/primingchart/
 
NINE ounces of corn sugar is definitely not what I would use! As it is, a co2 volume of 3.9 is pretty darn carbonated (I'd do less, I like my beers to be around 2.4 according to Beersmith) I don't understand that chart (I'm mathematically challenged) but I ran a quick look at Beersmith and I primed my last ten beers or so by using +-4 ounces of corn sugar. Of course, the charts do say nine ounces (as does Beersmith if you want to have that much carbonation).
 
To be honest, I wouldn't know a 1.5 CO2 beer from a 5.1 CO2 beer unless you told me. I mean, I could figure out which is which based on the amount of carbonation but to be able to taste it and say, "Oh yeah, that's about 3.2.", no, I'm not there yet.

From what I've read 2.4 is the about the norm. If you look at the scale from BYO it ranges from English Ales at 1.5 to German Weizens at 5.1 so 2.4 is just a little less than half way.

I guess I'm just going with what I'm reading. I've only had a couple commercial hefe's and they seemed rather highly carbed but I have no idea what level I've carbed my previous beers to, all using 3/4 corn sugar, to have a baseline to work from. I'm going to guess they're all around 2.4 but who knows.

Anyone else have any ideas? I'm just getting around to hauling everything upstairs to start bottling so I'm not committed as of yet on the amount of priming sugar.
 
well the weisenbier kit I brewed 3 weeks ago used 5oz of priming sugar for the 5gallon batch. for what that's worth...

9oz sounds way too high to me too, but I'm terrible at math, so I'm not much help to you in dialing in a more exact amount.
 
I bottled a hefe 2 weeks ago with 4.5oz of priming sugar (middle of the road from
Beersmith) and I think it carbed up fine. I didn't want to overdue it.
 
There was one slight error with my math. I didn't have exactly 5 gallons of beer to bottle, more like 4.5, but even with that adjustment my calculations called for 8 oz. of priming sugar. I didn't want to take the chance so I split the difference and went with 6 oz. I'll let you know how it turns out.
 
I thought I should provide an update on how this turned out.

This beer has been bottled now for almost a month, just a couple days shy. The carbonation is definitely there. Probably a little more carbed than I'd actually like but not bad.

However, there is one problem I have and that is that there's almost no head and the bubbles are "big". The best comparison I can make is they're more like soda bubbles than the nice thick foamy bubbles I was hoping for.

I did some research and I've read opinions stating that the big bubbles are a result of the fact I used corn sugar. Then others state that using DME as opposed to corn sugar doesn't matter because it's all about the protein make-up of the beer. This is the theory I'm more inclined to believe. CO2 is CO2. The size of the bubbles is going to be determined by the make up of the liquid the CO2 is permeating. That's not a scientific explanation by any means, it just makes sense to me.

So, here's the recipe:

1.5 lb. Vienna
1.5 lb. Wheat
5.25 lb. Wheat DME
1 oz. Saaz
Wyeat #3068

Steeped the grains at 158F for 45 minutes, added the DME and hops and boiled for an hour.

Is there something I could have added to help the bubble/head issue I'm seeing?
Will bottle conditioning for a longer time help the carbonation "breakdown" into smaller bubbles?
 
Roterdrache said:
I thought I should provide an update on how this turned out.

This beer has been bottled now for almost a month, just a couple days shy. The carbonation is definitely there. Probably a little more carbed than I'd actually like but not bad.

However, there is one problem I have and that is that there's almost no head and the bubbles are "big". The best comparison I can make is they're more like soda bubbles than the nice thick foamy bubbles I was hoping for.

I did some research and I've read opinions stating that the big bubbles are a result of the fact I used corn sugar. Then others state that using DME as opposed to corn sugar doesn't matter because it's all about the protein make-up of the beer. This is the theory I'm more inclined to believe. CO2 is CO2. The size of the bubbles is going to be determined by the make up of the liquid the CO2 is permeating. That's not a scientific explanation by any means, it just makes sense to me.

So, here's the recipe:

1.5 lb. Vienna
1.5 lb. Wheat
5.25 lb. Wheat DME
1 oz. Saaz
Wyeat #3068

Steeped the grains at 158F for 45 minutes, added the DME and hops and boiled for an hour.

Is there something I could have added to help the bubble/head issue I'm seeing?
Will bottle conditioning for a longer time help the carbonation "breakdown" into smaller bubbles?
Click to expand...

No major secret here- the bubbles will appear smaller as the conditioning progresses. Maybe put the beers in the fridge a day or so before drinking but it'll improve as time goes on.
 
Usually my beers have the smaller bubbles by this point, "this point" being 4 weeks in the bottle. But I also don't usually use that much priming sugar. Would the greater amount of priming sugar equate to a greater wait time to get those fine little bubbles?
 

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