Fizzy samples

So my LHBS had some prehopped cans on sale when I went in to pick up some more stuff do to another basic ale. Got a prehopped can of Pilsner and Cervesa, along with 2 lbs of light extract.

I decided to do the Cervesa, and I'm eyeballing this pile of leftover priming sugars I have from a few kits (I use the carb tabs so my son can help out) and decide to save the malt for the Pilsner. Tossed in 25 oz of priming sugar into the prehopped batch. I figured wth, it's sugar, the yeasties will chow down.

A week later I'm still taking gravity readings and they are progressing fine but damn if it isn't fizzy as hell. Like soda pop fizzy. I assumed priming sugar was basically just corn sugar and wouldn't make a difference in anything but this stuff looks carbonated already. Been tempted to just put it in a couple swingtops and refrigerate it to see how it tastes. This normal for corn sugar or did I do something goofy?

Gonna drink it anyway, no worries.

The corn sugar is 100% fermentable and very easy for the yeast to metabolize, so they're really going to town on it, producing quite a bit of alcohol and CO2. That's why you see the bubbles.

I guess that makes sense. Just never had a batch so heavily carbonated before bottling like this. Confused me.

The beer is fizzy in the fermenter? I thought carbonation was caused by CO2's inability to escape. Or do you just mean it's bubbling a lot on the surface?

It's not uncommon for light carbonation to occur while fermenting, but by the time it's finished out most of it will have escaped (unless you're fermenting under pressure). What's left will be mostly knocked out when you siphon to the bottling bucket. There still may be some carbonation left at bottling time, but not enough to adjust for so just prime as normal when you bottle it up.

gas moving through a liquid causes the gas to dissolve into the liquid. even though you cannot see it, beer coming from primary is full of CO2, and when you drop the hydrometer in, you create nucleation sites for CO2 to drop out of solution.

so when you take a hydro sample, you always spin it to dislodge the co2 for an accurate reading.

we have to prime with more sugar and bottle in order to produce noticable CO2 volumes.

if you ever get into wine making, you'll see that wine makers need to de-gas before bottling, otherwise the finished wine will have a tingle of carbonation on the tongue, adn the bitey-ness of carbonic acid.

The last hydro sample of my amarillo IPA was pretty fizzy. Bonus!

malkore said:

gas moving through a liquid causes the gas to dissolve into the liquid. even though you cannot see it, beer coming from primary is full of CO2, and when you drop the hydrometer in, you create nucleation sites for CO2 to drop out of solution.

so when you take a hydro sample, you always spin it to dislodge the co2 for an accurate reading.

we have to prime with more sugar and bottle in order to produce noticable CO2 volumes.

if you ever get into wine making, you'll see that wine makers need to de-gas before bottling, otherwise the finished wine will have a tingle of carbonation on the tongue, adn the bitey-ness of carbonic acid.

Click to expand...

I guess I didn't articulate it very well, my bad. The fizzy was in the sample tube itself before the hydrometer, was just there no matter how gentle I was drawing it from the tap. 4" of liquid with like a 2-3" head. I did have to spin the hydrometer and let it settle out to get a real reading after the head settled.

Bottled it yesterday, will see how it goes.