Coffee Table Book Prompts Carbo Query

Hi folks,

Bit of a beginner's question here.

Having just bottled my first-ever batch I thought it would be a good idea to pull out this coffee table book on beer we have lying around. It's a pretty good book as far as the pictures and interesting information goes. Nothing super informative, but OK on a Sunday afternoon.

But something sparked my attention. The book says that in a working brewery, beer will be transferred into a conditioning tank so as to "build up the carbon dioxide" which will "give the beer its head". It goes onto say that "sometimes" sugar is used in the bottling.

Now, I thought the whole reason I put sugar in my bottles was to encourage the head. I thought you have to put sugar in a bottle to carbonate beer, mead or whatever. Was that wrong? Is that just the homebrew way? Or is this book just wrong?

Thanks!
WW

Most commercial breweries force carbonate their beers rather than bottle condition, this could be the point the book was trying to make. Force carbing is pressurizing the vessel that the beer is in with c02 to produce carbonation, and bottle conditioning is adding x amount of sugar to the beer for the yeast to begin to start producing c02 again once its capped.

I hope that helps.

Sounds good Brakeman! I just didn't know if I was unnecessarily putting sugar into my beer but, nope, doesn't look that way. Thanks!

Yea that book is wrong to an extent.

You will have residual CO2 in the beer from fermentation. There are carbonation calculators that factor in fermentation temperature to tell you exactly how much priming sugar to get a certain carbonation level.

Dont worry, you are doing things right. The only exception to this rule is cask ales. They are served straight out of a secondary vessel. The only carbonation is the residual CO2.

Edcculus said:

Yea that book is wrong to an extent.

You will have residual CO2 in the beer from fermentation. There are carbonation calculators that factor in fermentation temperature to tell you exactly how much priming sugar to get a certain carbonation level.

Dont worry, you are doing things right. The only exception to this rule is cask ales. They are served straight out of a secondary vessel. The only carbonation is the residual CO2.

Click to expand...

Even real ale uses a primer. The only way round it is to keg/bottle partially unfermented beer or force carb.

Yes you need to prime your bottles,