Carbonation Question

Hey everyone,

Last Tuesday, I bottled 46 and a half bottles of my Mild Ale. I have been reading the forums and Charlie Papazian's Joy of Homebrewing book and it just makes me want to taste my batch, so here is my question:

If I open that half bottle of beer and taste it tonight and immediately recap it, will it continue to carbonate? I don't really care either way, as it is only a half bottle and the only reason I bottled that little in the first place was as a test. Just curious as to how carbonation works.

Thanks!

It will, but by opening it and pouring some out whatever CO2 that was built up in the bottle has been displaced with air. It will go stale sooner than later.

Yeah I figured it wouldn't keep as long. Thanks!

You're better off just drinking that half bottle anyway. A half bottle of beer will have a lot of head space in the bottle, which will make it difficult to carb properly. Carbonation works like this: The suspended yeast ferment the little sugar put in for carbonation. They give off CO2 (and a little bit of alcohol) and most of it (depending on storage temperature) comes out of solution and starts to build up in the headspace of the bottle. When the headspace can't take anymore CO2 (volume/pressure) it goes into solution (carbonation). When you have that much headspace, not much CO2 will be dissolved in the beer. It will be in the headspace. So, especially with a mild (low sugar for low carbonation), you'd probably end up with a flat beer no matter how long you waited.