Bottle Conditioning Time for Wheat Beers

Just curious how a wheat beer changes as it's bottle conditioned. I bottled a batch on Monday, and I'm targeting 2 weeks for conditioning in the bottle.

Just concerned, a sample I took 2 days prior to bottling tasted great! The bottled sample I tried today to check on the progress tasted awful. Not like it was a sour or infected batch...but SWEET. Whew it was like drinking wheat candy. I was happy that the citrus/apple and smoke characters from my cold-smoked dry hopping came out though. I was presently surprised by that.

I used 5oz of corn sugar and about 3.2oz of sucrose (ran out of corn sugar) to get my carbonation around 4.0. My hypothesis is that the immense amount of sugar used to carbonate just needs to be worked out still. Does that sounds right?

Recipe here if anyone wants to take a look. Like I said, everything has tasted great along the way so I think I like where the recipe is at the moment.

Yes, the reason it tasted that sweet is because the yeast hasn't had nearly enough time to go through that sugar. With that amount, You'll probably need to let it condition at least 3-4 weeks. You'll want to be careful, because even though you intended on a high vol of CO2, that much sugar may result in a lot of bottle bombs.

smiller said:

Yes, the reason it tasted that sweet is because the yeast hasn't had nearly enough time to go through that sugar. With that amount, You'll probably need to let it condition at least 3-4 weeks. You'll want to be careful, because even though you intended on a high vol of CO2, that much sugar may result in a lot of bottle bombs.

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Bottle bombs is a concern. So far so good, and I hope it stays that way (but now you've got me worried). I gave a couple of bottles out with a warning but I think I'll re-warn some folks.

7.2 oz of sugar total for carbonating is a ridiculous amount assuming this was a 5 gallon batch . I do 6.25 gallon batches of my Hefe and use about 4.8oz total.

Bottle bombs a well as huge gushers are definitely going to be a concern regardless of conditioning time, you really should have consulted a priming calculator

duboman said:

7.2 oz of sugar total for carbonating is a ridiculous amount assuming this was a 5 gallon batch . I do 6.25 gallon batches of my Hefe and use about 4.8oz total.

Bottle bombs a well as huge gushers are definitely going to be a concern regardless of conditioning time, you really should have consulted a priming calculator

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I did. 4.0 is in the middle of the recommended amount of carbonation for a wheat beer. I calculated ~8.5oz of corn sugar for that given an 72F storage temp. Sucrose you need about 90% of what you'd use for corn sugar...so I added 3.2 roughly to make up for it. I assure you my decision was mathematically driven. What I should've consulted was the structural limitations of my bottles.

It's 8.2oz not 7.2oz. Hey if I notice some bottle bombs, I'll release the pressure on the bottles and recap. Or I'll just cool them down. Hopefully it turns out or else I'm going to rename it to Smokey Al's Vengeance.

sidepart said:

I did. 4.0 is in the middle of the recommended amount of carbonation for a wheat beer. I calculated ~8.5oz of corn sugar for that given an 72F storage temp. Sucrose you need about 90% of what you'd use for corn sugar...so I added 3.2 roughly to make up for it. I assure you my decision was mathematically driven. What I should've consulted was the structural limitations of my bottles.

It's 8.2oz not 7.2oz. Hey if I notice some bottle bombs, I'll release the pressure on the bottles and recap. Or I'll just cool them down. Hopefully it turns out or else I'm going to rename it to Smokey Al's Vengeance.

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I'm not following your math

4 units is a ton of carbonation. Even though it's mid style, you nay still get a bottle bomb. Be careful

Where did you see that 4 units is mid style? I checked two sources (Brewsmith and http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php). BS was around 2.6-3 and the kegerators was 2.6 - 4. Both were for wheat beers.

I'd watch those very closely.

jms5180 said:

I'm not following your math

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My description is a little confusing.

Math works out like this:

Needed 8.5oz of corn sugar. I've been finding that you generally only need about a fuzzy 90% of that amount if you're using sucrose instead of corn sugar.

I needed 3.5 additional ounces of corn sugar. 90% of 3.5 is about 3.15 ounces. I measured and added 3.2 ounces of sucrose in addition to 5 ounces of corn sugar. 8.2 ounces of sugars total.

rjsnau said:

Where did you see that 4 units is mid style? I checked two sources (Brewsmith and http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php). BS was around 2.6-3 and the kegerators was 2.6 - 4. Both were for wheat beers.

I'd watch those very closely.

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Checked my math against. http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html . They had a pull down that mentions the carbonation for a wheat beer. Don't recall the other resource I consulted. Either way, neither of them differentiated between recommendations for a keg or bottle. -shrugs- Just need to do better research in the future. Happens.

Thanks for the table link by the way. That's a fantastic chart, haven't seen anything like that.

I condition everything in the bottle for a minimum of 3 weeks, even low ABV brews. I let stronger brews sit longer than that.

You should be fine in 2 weeks. I just bottled a hefeweizen at 3.6 volumes and it came out great. I entered it in a competition with 10 days in the bottle and took it 2nd place. Probably would have done better if it was 14 days but I decided to enter it at the last minute.

beernut70 said:

You should be fine in 2 weeks. I just bottled a hefeweizen at 3.6 volumes and it came out great. I entered it in a competition with 10 days in the bottle and took it 2nd place. Probably would have done better if it was 14 days but I decided to enter it at the last minute.

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Man it'd be fun to come up with an unexpected and fantastic brew that'd win a contest.

Although I'm told that strict rules prevent me from referring to Smokey Al as a hefeweizen...

I gently lifted each cap and vented the pressure on my bottles. Doesn't seem like there was a lot of pressure built up yet...so I might need to consider doing it again. I was careful not to bend the caps as I slightly lifted them, so I just resealed them with my capper.

FYI update. Venting did the trick, no bombs. Beer tastes fantastic.