Bottle carb time vs temperature chart?

I realize the general rule is 3 weeks to carb @ 70F. My basement has been in the high 50's lately and I realize this will take longer to carb but how much longer? On the flip side I've read temps in the 80's+ will carb beer in several days to a week. I can move my bottles upstairs but the wife woudl kill me if I come home to find bottle bombs and beer soaked carpet, so I'd rather let them in the basment and give it another couple weeks or so!

Anyone have a chart bases on temp and approximate time for a beer to carb?

For me, I never had a beer carb up in my cellar in the winter. It wasn't a matter of time- it was just too cool for the ale yeast to be active. Once I brought it back up to where it was nearly 62 degrees, it eventually did carb up a little.

cbehr said:

I can move my bottles upstairs but the wife woudl kill me if I come home to find bottle bombs and beer soaked carpet . . .

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Put them upstairs in a chest cooler with the lid shut.

No, there's no quatifiable answer that can be defnitive, there's thousands of variables at play for every beer.

Every batch is different, there's different yeasts, different proteins present in each beer based on grain bills, that are going to react differently to even the same yeast, micro temps depending on where the bottles are stored in regards to where the nearest heat source is, yeast health, yadda yadda yadda.....

I always say, a beer needs EXACTLY how long it needs, and not a moment sooner.

There is nothing "typical" in brewing...No two fermentations are ever exactly the same. Even with the same recipe/yeast, etc. Too many variables at play in any given day.

When we are dealing with living creatures, there is a wild card factor in play..Just like with other animals, including humans...No two behave the same.

You can split a batch in half put them in 2 identical carboys, and pitch equal amounts of yeast from the same starter...and have them act completely differently...for some reason on a subatomic level...think about it...yeasties are small...1 degree difference in temp to us, could be a 50 degree difference to them...one fermenter can be a couple degrees warmer because it's closer to a vent all the way across the room and the yeasties take off...

Someone, Grinder I think posted a pic once of 2 carboys touching each other, and one one of the carboys the krausen had formed only on the side that touched the other carboy...probably reacting to the heat of the first fermentation....but it was like symbiotic or something...

Yeasts are like teenagers, swmbos, and humans in general, they have their own individual way of doing things. So it's never a good idea to compare one fermentation to another. Or bottle conditioning for that matter.

All we can do is speak in generalization, we know from experience and observation that an average gravity beer, in a 12 ounce bottle stored at 70 degrees takes around 3 weeks, give or take. But there's so many other variables that affect that timeframe- size of bottle, how long the beers are ACTUALLY at 70 degrees, gravity of beer, etc. So we just aim for the ballpark and tell folks that it really is foolproof.

If you think there is any risk whatsoever of bottle bombs, you need to look at your process.

And yeah, temps in the fifties mean that the beer may never carb up... the yeast are likely asleep.

Revvy said:

There is nothing "typical" in brewing...No two fermentations are ever exactly the same. Even with the same recipe/yeast, etc. Too many variables at play in any given day.
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Probably true, except I would suggest that storing beer in the 50s is probably below the fermentation temperature for the vast majority of ale yeast strains, "typically".

In my experience, it won't carb up at all at those temperatures.

There are alot of things in brewing that are "typical". You can usually depend on certain temperatures and a certain time line for certain results.

Yooper said:

Probably true, except I would suggest that storing beer in the 50s is probably below the fermentation temperature for the vast majority of ale yeast strains, "typically".

In my experience, it won't carb up at all at those temperatures.

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Oh heck yeah. I just said the same thing in another thread. The closer you get to a yeast's dormancy temp, the more sluggish the yeast is going to be, and the longer it's going to take...But if you get to the dormancy temp, the yeast are asleep and NOTHING is going to happen.

Thanks everyone, sounds like I need to move them then as this is just too cold. I can put them in a large tupperware container in a spare bedroom just in case somethere were to happen.

A yeasts dormancy temp - is that the lowest end of a recommended fermentation range for that yeast? So if the OP had used a yeast that was able to ferment in the range of his basement temps therefore was above the minimum fermentation temp (say the yeast could ferment between 55-65deg, would it then be able to carb up ok at those low temps (above 55) also ?

I had beer sitting at around 55 F for two weeks and it carbed up a little which worked for the beer that was in it you could always make an experiment out of it and test it at the week marks and see how it's going