Low Carbonation Beers

Just racked the dry stout from brewing classic styles to a keg. The recipe says to carb to 1 - 1.5 vols - which is way lower than anything I've brewed so far. According to the carb charts, it seems I would just set the psi around 2 and leave it there. Does that sound right? I suppose I'll have to significant shorten my beer line. But, that aside, is there anything else I should take into consideration?

http://brewblogger.net/index.php?page=tools&section=force_carb

Check out this calculator it should help you. If your carbonating at refrigeration temps. I would get the beer to the temp you want to force carbonate at, for my fridge is about 42 degrees F, plus I would add a bit more carbonation than that as most stouts/porters require between 1.7 - 2.5 volumes, as is shown in the link I sent you. If you were to force carb at 42F it would require 7 - 8 psi to set it and forget it. You could however fast force carb it at about 20 psi for one day, then tone it down to the required 7psi for the duration of time it's on tap, which is actually a great serving psi also. Good luck...I hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply. The calculator gave me 2.1psi at 42 degrees to get 1.5 vols. So, looks like I was close. Sounds like you are saying that would work, but that I might consider bumping the carbonation up a bit over what the recipe states.

I find that most of us Americans, since we pretty much grew up on fizzy beers, tend to prefer our beers a little more carbed than style guidlines, so yeah, if you're a little high, you probably wont even notice.

Craig311 said:

I suppose I'll have to significant shorten my beer line.

Click to expand...

Don't do that. IMO all of your lines should be long enough to handle the highest carb level and warmest serving temp you'll ever want to use. Cutting them down is just asking for trouble. Those calculators/spreadsheets/equations that claim to tell you the "ideal" line length are a bit misleading. All that most of them actually calculate is the line length that provides a flow of ~1gal/min, which can be way too fast at warmer temps or higher carb levels. The only side effect of longer lines is a slightly slower pour. For me, the "ideal" line length is the one that allows me to pour any of my beers and not have issues.

Yeah unless you're going to ALWAYS have a beer like that on tap, and feel the need to dial in your line length for only that beer, just leave the lines as is. If they're working fine for your system, you should be able to change the gas level and have everything be fine.

Thanks again for the replies. I'll try to avoid cutting the line since the vast majority of homebrew I have on tap goes to 2.5 vols or so. Also, any commercial beers I put on are usually at least 2.5 as well. I've only shortened one of my lines once, knowing I'd have to change it out after the keg was kicked. It was a 5 year old Oskar Blues Ten Fidy that I knew was going to be on for a while.

I have it sitting at 6 psi right now and will see how things go. That should get me slightly below 2 vols and I'm ok with a relatively slow pour if need be.