Optimum SG to bottle without adding primer.

Hello fellow brewers and brewdetts...

I have been wondering about something that I would like some advice or info. It is in regards to bottling beer according to SG without a primer.

Most of the time I will ferment beer until the target FSG and add a sugar primer solution before bottling. This usually proves very good and I have not had any blown caps. However, I am wondering if there is some optimum range of low SG where you can bottle the beer to finish in the bottle without risk of blown caps or over effervescence?

Is this what is meant by Secondary Fermentation? What is the optimum SG to do this with? How much time in the bottle (sounds like a song title )?

Thanks for any help you can give?

TripHops...

There is no way to do this safely. FG is determined by a complex of unreliable and unmeasurable factors, so there's no way you can be certain how much fermentable sugar is left accurately.

Secondary fermentation is completely different. It usually involves the addition of fruit or other fermentables late in the process.

Are you asking if it's possible to catch a beer just before it finishes fermenting and carb with the last bit of unfermented sugar instead of adding priming sugar?

I've always understood secondary fermentation as transferring the beer to a second vessel (ie carboy) after primary fermentation has finished (already at final gravity). This enables the yeast to clean up the byproducts of fermentation, clearing and maturing the beer. Not so much that's it's converting sugars to alcohol. Definitely not finishing fermentation in the bottle.

As for carbonating by letting fermentation finish in the bottle, I'd think that's way too much of a risk to be worth trying. I for one can never exactly tell what my FG will be (even if usually a point or two below target) and have a sense I'd either end up with uncarbonated beer or a bottle bomb if I tried that. Perhaps a brewer with substantially more brews under their belt who can accurately control every single variable and know exactly what kind of attenuation they will get might be able to pull it off, but I still wouldn't try it.

Perhaps a more experienced brewer can chime in

For JonM - answer is yes, with low or no risk of bombs.

TripHops

It's innovative thinking, but go with what the other guys have said. You really can't do this safely. We add measured amounts of priming sugar so we can control the amount of pressure in the bottles. If you just use unfermented sugar, it's a total crapshoot as to how much gas and pressure you'll get.

TripHops said:

Hello fellow brewers and brewdetts...

I have been wondering about something that I would like some advice or info. It is in regards to bottling beer according to SG without a primer.

Most of the time I will ferment beer until the target FSG and add a sugar primer solution before bottling. This usually proves very good and I have not had any blown caps. However, I am wondering if there is some optimum range of low SG where you can bottle the beer to finish in the bottle without risk of blown caps or over effervescence?

Is this what is meant by Secondary Fermentation? What is the optimum SG to do this with? How much time in the bottle (sounds like a song title )?

Thanks for any help you can give?

TripHops...

Click to expand...

You could call bottle conditioning secondary fermentation. However, many times secondary fermentation is referring to late fermentables additions in some higher ABV beers (where often times new strains of yeast are also added). Just of curiosity...why would you want to bottle condition using such a method? I am sure it could be done but I can think of several reasons why I would not consider it. A couple just off the top of my head would be: 1) There would be so much particulate (trub) matter still suspended in the fermenting wort that you would get a ton of sediment in your bottles. And 2) Would be that it would be near impossible to figure proper CO2 volumes.

A brewery I've done some work experience cask conditions like this:
1. Ferment beer for usually 3 days
2. Top crop yeast and transfer to conditioning tank and leave over night
3. Fill casks adding finings but no primimg sugar.

They take regular gravity readings and plot on a chart to see it level out. I think they said there is usually about a point or two of gravity left which gives 1.5vol co2. They've had this yeast for like 20 years though so imagine it's pretty consistent.

Thanks for chiming in ya’ll and providing such good information. I agree with attempting to guess the amount of fermentable sugar left in the beer before bottling is virtually impossible without the proper equipment and chemistry background.

Anyway, it was a good thought and I am sure there are formulas, equipment and knowledge out there that this can be accomplished. Unfortunately I don’t have either and I ain’t going to UC Davis at my age for that degree. Besides I will never get my money or time back and it is much cheaper simply to be a little more patient and prime :-0

However, ChillWill did spark another thought. Using kegs to complete the fermentation process and measuring the amount of CO2 pressure could work. Information about the amount of CO2 in bottles is available. I would suspect that you could rack to keg and pressurize to seal the keg and remove O2 then reduce pressure to allow fermentation to complete. Using your CO2 gauges, you could measure the CO2 along the way.

Bottling the carbonated beer could be accomplished without fear of bottle bombs and the amount of carbonation in the bottle could be maintained. OR simply consume from the keg.

Any thoughts on this one guys?

TripHops

Yes I have a thought...WHY?!

What is the actual goal here besides "can it be done?"???

If you're trying to avoid priming sugar, either keg it and force carb, then bottle, or look into krausening, which is using wort to prime instead of sugar.

If you really wanted to do it, you could bottle at a couple points over estimated FG then test the bottles over the next few weeks to check carbonation level. Once you reach the desired carbonation you could bottle paturize on the stovetop.

That's how I'd do it if I REALLY wanted to carb with no priming sugar. As stated by previous posters it doesn't seem like the best idea.

Hi malkore,

Yes, there are a couple of reasons for asking. 1) I wanted to see if this idea had any merit to actually try. Which from the responses, the risk would be to great for any rewards, and 2) The strong Belgian ale my friend and I brewed would get better in maturity and we wanted to bottle it vs. keg it to see how the beer would change over time.

Basically, our recipe is a clone of the Matilda strong Belgian brew from Goose Island brewery in Chicago. The brew master mentions that their Matilda brew can be kept in the bottle for up to 5 years. Why you would want to keep a beer for 5 years is beyond my comprehension. However, I felt it might be worth a try to keep it for a few months and see the maturity changes over time.

Those are my reasons. However, priming is certainly the best option with less risk.

Thanks for commenting.

TripHops

TripHops said:

Why you would want to keep a beer for 5 years is beyond my comprehension.

Click to expand...

Because things change over time. Big beers (the kind that are typically aged) tend to mellow with flavors melding into each other over time. It is not atypical for some beers to be much better after some time aging. This is not unlike the concept of aging wine or spirits.