Carbonation from bottling before fermentation is complete

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killsurfcity

killsurfcity

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i'm pretty sure what most will say, but is it traditional for some low alcohol wild beers to be bottled still fermenting? some of what i've read leads me to believe so. for instance:

"Michael Jackson" said:
Does a further stylistic description arise from the fact that Lambic, which has a long fermentation in a large cask, emerges with very little carbonation? If a young Lambic (still containing plenty of fermentable sugars) is blended with an older one (in which a complex chain of yeasts has developed) the ensuing activity will then provide a lively carbonation.
Click to expand...
source

at the end of the day, adding priming sugar just a way of continuing fermentation in the bottle. if we knew for instance, how adding priming sugar affected the gravity of a solution, couldn't we just wait until that level had been reached and bottle with the right amount of sugar left to carb up?

i realize this could be more difficult overall, but part of me likes the idea of a Berliner weisse (or Gose) that is bottled early and carbs as it ages.

I have done this myself with ginger beer to good affect. bottling 5 days after fermentation begins in earnest, or as soon as vigorous fermentation stops. Though for this i use seltzer bottles (which can take high pressure) just in case.

anyone else tried this?
 
sounds unpredictable for achieving an accurate volume of carbonation. if you used thick champagne style bottles then this doesn't sound too far off from blending old & young batches and bottling to restart fermentation without adding any priming sugar. the important thing is this, though:
"an older one (in which a complex chain of yeasts has developed) ". for best results their should be an older batch for its complex flora.

i tried what you're saying by bottling a pretty active berliner weisse after 10 days using a 3rd gen roselare strain and it was sparkling like champagne! i did use priming sugar, though. i only used regular 12oz bottles and didn't have a single bottle bomb so it's doable. OG was ~1.030 and bottling SG was 1.010. just drink rather quick once they're in their prime!:D
 
jessup, you are right. The big deal is predictability.
If you are a Lambic or Flander's Red beer producer that has been making the same beer for hundreds of years than you can be pretty certain where the beer will finish. But that is the difficulty to the homebrewer, we don't have enough historical data to be certain.
If you do the calculations, even a single gravity point drop is a considerable amount of CO2.
The other way that homebrewer's can do this is in a keg. By having your keg temperature controlled you can know the psi value you need for a certain volume of CO2. So keg the beer early or blend with younger beer and bleed the pressure to maintain the correct pressure. (The trick is to have the beer at a temperature where the yeast is still active, but not too high or the solubility of CO2 goes way down)
 
so your missing some of the details about making gueuze,

"young" lambic is typically 1yr old, and the sugars are normally unfermentable, also at this point the food the bugs are using are sort of the last pickings and arent anywhere near what a very fresh beer would contain


You could do something like this with a bweiss, but like others said it would be hard to get right

FYI, gosebier was actually bottled while still fermenting in very long neck bottles, the bacteria would then form a plug in the neck sealing the bottle and carbing the beer
 
Hey. wanted to bring back this thread as it is similar to what i am currently contemplating...i made up a Gruit recipe (Yarrow based with other homegrown herbs) and it contains a lot of sugar. i sipped on a little sample today and it tastes great and is still sweet. She's been fermenting for about a week. now, my question is, since i am not looking for an overly inebriating drink and the flavor tastes great at this point in time but the airlock activity is about twice a minute (without my hydrometer for another week =[ ) could i just go ahead and bottle this girl up now without priming sugar?? i figure there is enough sugar to carbonate a bit but not enough to explode.... thoughts?
 
CrookedShepheard said:
i figure there is enough sugar to carbonate a bit but not enough to explode.... thoughts?
Click to expand...

Well, that's a fine line.

It might ferment all the way down to .990, and you may have lots of explosions. Or not.

Flying shards of glass that could severely injure my friends and family would deter me.

But if fermentation finishes, and a prescribed amount of priming sugar is added, then no bottle explosions would happen.

I really don't think that's a tough choice.
 
right on, thanks for the advice, amigo. from the time of posting the question up till reading this response i began leaning far closer to the side of playing it safe so you just help solidify that assumption.
-Cheers.
 
CrookedShepheard said:
i sipped on a little sample today and it tastes great and is still sweet. She's been fermenting for about a week. now, my question is, since i am not looking for an overly inebriating drink and the flavor tastes great at this point in time but the airlock activity is about twice a minute (could i just go ahead and bottle this girl up now without priming sugar?
Click to expand...
At the risk of hijacking, what could CrookedShepheard do to preserve this beer at this 'tastes great' stage? Are there any options?

Could he pasteurize the beer and then keg to carbonate? If so, how would that be done?
 
killsurfcity said:
i'm pretty sure what most will say, but is it traditional for some low alcohol wild beers to be bottled still fermenting? some of what i've read leads me to believe so. for instance:

source

at the end of the day, adding priming sugar just a way of continuing fermentation in the bottle. if we knew for instance, how adding priming sugar affected the gravity of a solution, couldn't we just wait until that level had been reached and bottle with the right amount of sugar left to carb up?

i realize this could be more difficult overall, but part of me likes the idea of a Berliner weisse (or Gose) that is bottled early and carbs as it ages.

I have done this myself with ginger beer to good affect. bottling 5 days after fermentation begins in earnest, or as soon as vigorous fermentation stops. Though for this i use seltzer bottles (which can take high pressure) just in case.

anyone else tried this?
Click to expand...

I found this post because I had the same question. I frequently bottle beers with brettanomyces. Brettanomyces will continue to ferment complex sugars and carbohydrates in the beer slowly over time. It's common practice by commercial breweries (Russian River, Crooked Stave, etc.) to bottle these beers when the beer reaches a certain gravity (say, below 1.007), but they will factor in additional gravity points into their bottle priming sugar so that they do not end up with gushers (or bottle bombs), and because they will be aging the beer for 6 months in the bottle before releasing them.

What I'm looking for is a formula for calculating how many volumes of CO2 will be gained if the beer drops 0.001 specific gravity. I want to subtract a couple of gravity points worth of corn sugar from my bottle priming sugar calculator when bottling a batch of beer fermented with brettanomyces. Any help with a formula for this would be greatly appreciated.
 
I don't have a formula, but I believe it's 1 gravity point or .5 Plato drop = 1 vol of carbonation. I'm sure there is a formula that will give you grams of CO2 or volumes, whichever you prefer.

Kaiser has what you need here (of course, I should've looked there first). Towards the bottom, 'Remaining or Residual Extract'. There's some math and then he gives the figures above.

Bottle my first brett refermented saison at 1.005 with Brett Brux recently. Went for 750s and few 33cls just in case, but hoping with residual CO2 to hit around 3.5.



ocluke said:
I found this post because I had the same question. I frequently bottle beers with brettanomyces. Brettanomyces will continue to ferment complex sugars and carbohydrates in the beer slowly over time. It's common practice by commercial breweries (Russian River, Crooked Stave, etc.) to bottle these beers when the beer reaches a certain gravity (say, below 1.007), but they will factor in additional gravity points into their bottle priming sugar so that they do not end up with gushers (or bottle bombs), and because they will be aging the beer for 6 months in the bottle before releasing them.

What I'm looking for is a formula for calculating how many volumes of CO2 will be gained if the beer drops 0.001 specific gravity. I want to subtract a couple of gravity points worth of corn sugar from my bottle priming sugar calculator when bottling a batch of beer fermented with brettanomyces. Any help with a formula for this would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
 
I'm not going to do the math this morning to see if I am correct, but I have in my notes that 0.43 ozs of sucrose (table sugar) = 1 volume of CO2 in 1 gallon. 0.43 ozs of sucrose in 1 gallon will raise the gravity by .0012.

Hope this helps.
 

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