Bottle Carbing Idea

I had a question regarding Volumes of CO2 in a carbonated cider. I found a Priming Sugar Calculator. It asks you to enter the Volumes of CO2 you want in the beverage. It then asks you the volume of the liquid in gallons and also the temperature. It then calculates the amount of sugar you need to get the requested number of volumes of CO2.

My question is, what is it refering to when it is asking for the number of volumes of CO2. Is it the number of volumes of the dead space above the liquid or is it the volume of the bottle?

I'd like to take a Grolsh type bottle and put a stopper with a pressure gauge on it. Using Boyles Law, I should be able to calculate the pressure in PSI that I would like to see to provide a number of volumes of CO2. This way I could just view the gauge instead of having to open one every few days or weeks to test.

I think it would be allot safer as you may get a faster or slower ferment than you expect and have a over pressurized bottle or a under pressurized bottle.

I think this could work. Any opinions?

It's asking for your desired volumes of co2. As an example, my pale ale is at 2.4 volumes. You may want it a bit "bubblier" and go up to 2.7 or so.

You don't have to gauge it. If the cider is done, and you add the correct amount of priming sugar, you WILL have the correct volume of co2.

Yooper_Brew said:

It's asking for your desired volumes of co2. As an example, my pale ale is at 2.4 volumes. You may want it a bit "bubblier" and go up to 2.7 or so.

You don't have to gauge it. If the cider is done, and you add the correct amount of priming sugar, you WILL have the correct volume of co2.

Click to expand...

I understand the volumes is the multiplier, but multiplying what? In your case, 2.4 volumes of what quantity? The volume of the bottle? The Liquid? or the Volume of the dead space?

Yooper_Brew said:

It's asking for your desired volumes of co2. As an example, my pale ale is at 2.4 volumes. You may want it a bit "bubblier" and go up to 2.7 or so.

You don't have to gauge it. If the cider is done, and you add the correct amount of priming sugar, you WILL have the correct volume of co2.

Click to expand...

Also Yooper, the reason I was interested in doing this is so you can wait till you get the desired SG, and then add the priming sugar without having to wait till its completely dry and then back sweeten to get the taste you wanted.

The way I see that most do it now is they add the sugar and wait some amount of time and test. This would allow me to tell exactly when its done and
then I can pasteurize.

Does this make sense to try?

It's not volumes of liquid, it's volumes of CO2 dissolved in the liquid. see this explanation:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/volumes-co2-105955/
The more volumes of CO2 in your cider the more carbonation.

Are you planning on testing the gravity of the bottles regularly to see when it gets back to your desired OG after adding the priming sugar?

pimento said:

It's not volumes of liquid, it's volumes of CO2 dissolved in the liquid. see this explanation:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/volumes-co2-105955/
The more volumes of CO2 in your cider the more carbonation.

Are you planning on testing the gravity of the bottles regularly to see when it gets back to your desired OG after adding the priming sugar?

Click to expand...

I havn't worked out all of the details yet, so I don't know. I guess that would make some sense, but I havn't read that anyone does this.

I think that if the priming sugar calculation works, when I reach the calculated pressure, the priming sugar should be gone. So in reality, it would be aproximatly right.

The only reason I was concidering this was that I've read a fair amount about bottle bombs and undercarbed cider.

I would see the procedure as calculating and adding the priming sugar, then fill all the bottles desired, and then fill the test bottle and cap everything.
I would then monitor the pressure in the test bottle until I reach the desired pressure, Then pasturize. I have not bottle carbed yet, I'll be doing my first batch this weekend, so I don't understand all of the details yet. My thoughts were that if you add priming sugar and you wait a specific time to test the old way, depending on the activity of the yeast on the prime sugar, you may get inconsistant gassing rates of the cider.

For example, if I was using a more agressive yeast, I may not get the same gas rate as if I was using something more mild, so Time testing may not provide consistant results. You may get a over or under carbed bottle.

I may be overthinking this but thats what happens I guess when your in the engineering field

Ok, I read the post you were refering to regarding the desription of what 1 volume of CO2 is.

Got_Trub defined in that post
"1 volume is 1 liter of CO2 at 1 atmosphere in 1 liter of fluid (beer). You can substitute gal for liter."

So it is related to the volume of liquid.

Yes, it's the volume of the CO2 dissolved in the liquid compared to the volume of the liquid.

Using the pressure to figure the carbonation level could probably work since I think some keggers do it this way when they naturally carbonate instead of using gas.

Are there pressure gauges you can get to fit a grolsch type bottle?

If not, i wonder if a small paintball cylinder with a pressure gauge would work.

pimento said:

Yes, it's the volume of the CO2 dissolved in the liquid compared to the volume of the liquid.

Using the pressure to figure the carbonation level could probably work since I think some keggers do it this way when they naturally carbonate instead of using gas.

Are there pressure gauges you can get to fit a grolsch type bottle?

If not, i wonder if a small paintball cylinder with a pressure gauge would work.

Click to expand...

Well we have a number of sizes at work, but I'll probably have to drill a hole in the stopper and put a stem in it.

If I'm unable to drill the hole in the original stopper, I'll probably spin one up out of nylon or delron on the lathe, and thread a drilled hole in it.

To me, the whole idea is to be able to tell when the gas pressure is right for carbonation, and be a bit easier to get a repeatable result.

I did a interm test with a regular pop bottle. I wanted to test it this way prior to spinning up a new cap for the Grolsch bottle.

This is a 30 PSI gauge that I installed into the Pop bottle cap. I drilled and tapped the cap, screwed the gauge in and then epoxied it in to seal it.

This reading is 2.5 Hours after priming sugar was added and capped. Once I know this works, I'll plot a table with pressure vs SG reading to see if I can predict when it will make it to 29.4 Lbs which should be 2 Volumes if I recall correctly.

It may require a 50 Lb Gauge in the future if it all works out.

This was at a SG of 1.012 without cold crashing. It is much clearer than the Picture shows for some reason.

Anyway, I'm putting it in a plastic bin overnight in case I've weakened the cap and it doesn't hold the pressure. It currently is gaining about a 1/10 of a LB per hour. I don't know what the pressure curve will look like with a active ferment going until I have all the data.

I'll also leave the cap on when I pasteurize to see what the pressure rise is when heating it up.

Are you factoring in the temperature of the solution? Less CO2 will dissolve into solution at a higher temp giving you a lower volume of CO2 in solution, or vice versa, right? So I guess your chart could be for a constant temperature - or multiple charts for a variety of temps.

Frodo said:

Are you factoring in the temperature of the solution? Less CO2 will dissolve into solution at a higher temp giving you a lower volume of CO2 in solution, or vice versa, right? So I guess your chart could be for a constant temperature - or multiple charts for a variety of temps.

Click to expand...

Frodo, I'm just getting going with this, so I certainly haven't thought of everything. You bring up a good point. In this particular case it is at 68 Deg. The rate of pressure rise, I didn't capture in the beginning 5 Lbs of pressure
however I do know the amount of sugar added and the SG of the cider at the time.

I intend to take detailed measurements this week. This is more for a proof of concept, rather than a detailed test.

I've read allot on the web of exploding bottles and undercarbed bottles. The safety aspect of this is probably more important than the repeatability of the resultant carbonation.

I don't even know how much a plastic bottle will handle. But I'm going to find out

I was just scrounging around for a pressure gauge to try this myself.

There's a chart here showing pressure vs temp for force carbing different beer styles.
http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php

I'm not sure if that applies directly to bottle carbing though, since I believe force carbing in the keg involves dialing the pressure higher for several days to achieve a final pressure shown in the chart.

pimento said:

I was just scrounging around for a pressure gauge to try this myself.

There's a chart here showing pressure vs temp for force carbing different beer styles.
http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php

I'm not sure if that applies directly to bottle carbing though, since I believe force carbing in the keg involves dialing the pressure higher for several days to achieve a final pressure shown in the chart.

Click to expand...

Pimento, I was under the impression that it would take a rise in pressure to 29 lbs to get 2 Volumes of Gas into the liquid as pressure and desolved gas is linear with a fixed volume of liquid?

pimento said:

I was just scrounging around for a pressure gauge to try this myself.

There's a chart here showing pressure vs temp for force carbing different beer styles.
http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php

I'm not sure if that applies directly to bottle carbing though, since I believe force carbing in the keg involves dialing the pressure higher for several days to achieve a final pressure shown in the chart.

Click to expand...

Pimento, I gave that page a look and it is way different than the data I see on this web page: http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/carbonation.html

Edit: Its only different by a small amount. I need to figure out why I come up with 29lbs for 2 volumes when these two pages say about 19.
.
Edit: Looks like I might have forgot to subtract atmospheric pressure and add the offset for 1 volume in my formula.

Unfortunately, I don't keg, so my experience with this sort of thing is limited to carbing beer with a set amount of priming sugar.

There may be some differences since in keg carbing you're forcing the CO2 into solution under pressure, but here the CO2 is produced by the yeast and may start out in solution.

You might want to post this in the kegging and bottling forum to see if any of the experts have experience with it.

After 12 Hours now, the pressure is up to 8 Psi. Pressure Rise has tapered off. I'll post again this afternoon when I get home from work.

Did you find a pressure gauge?

Also noted on my scratch pad that I had calculated for 2 Volumes and 2.5 Volumes. 2.5 Volumes requires about 27 to 28 Psi.

I was wondering if the cap and the gauge would take the pressure or not so I estimated the force on the gauge, and on the cap.

Gauge Thread Diameter ~ 0.405".
Area of gauge stem surface - 0.1288 square inches.

Cap inside Diameter ~ 1.0"
Area of Cap inside surface - 0.785 square inches

At 2.5 Volumes of CO2:
27.6 Psi
Force on Gauge = 3.55 Lbs (0.1288 * 27.6 Psi)

Cap Diameter inside - 1.0"
27.6 Psi
Force on Cap = 21.67 Lbs (0.785 * 27.6 Psi)

There is only a small amount of threads in the cap as it is fairly thin plastic (gauge is epoxied in), but I expect the cap and gauge threads to hold without issue. The force isn't that much with that small a surface area for ether item with only 27.6 Psi applied.

Edit:
I don't know if anyone has put this much pressure on a plastic pop bottle or not, but I'm unsure if it will distort or pop at that pressure or not. I suppose I could hook up a compressor to one and test it.

24 Hours after bottling and pressure is only at 8.5 Lbs

48 Hours after bottling 9 Psi. Last post for this. I expect this to take 2 weeks at this rate. We'll see. I'll post the final data at the end.

I bottled some graff weds night, so I thought I'd try out this method.

Half the graff was bottled with the right amount of priming sugar and the other half back sweetened with some frozen AJ.

I've got the primed graff in the bottle with the gauge and another soda bottle filled with backsweetened graff side by side so I can check the carbonation with the squeeze test before pasteurizing.

I was surprised how quickly the PSI went up, 5 psi in about 3 hrs, then it tapered off and is slowly rising past 8 psi today.

I'm really hoping this works out, it would be nice to have a hard number to go by instead of guessing.

pimento said:

I bottled some graff weds night, so I thought I'd try out this method.

Half the graff was bottled with the right amount of priming sugar and the other half back sweetened with some frozen AJ.

I've got the primed graff in the bottle with the gauge and another soda bottle filled with backsweetened graff side by side so I can check the carbonation with the squeeze test before pasteurizing.

I was surprised how quickly the PSI went up, 5 psi in about 3 hrs, then it tapered off and is slowly rising past 8 psi today.

I'm really hoping this works out, it would be nice to have a hard number to go by instead of guessing.

Click to expand...

I saw the same thing, psi went up to 5 PSI then slowed down. I'm at about 12.5 or 13 right now. I'm waiting for 27.6 which is 2.5 Volumes CO2.

I took some of my Granny Smith cider over to my Dads today for him to try out. Its really just good UV pasteurized 5% ABV hard cider I made with a touch of Citric Acid added in to tart it up slightly. My Dad drank 2, I drank 2. My Mother who doesn't drink much at all finished off a bottle. I guess its a hit

It only had 12.5 PSI (only 1.13 Volumes of CO2) and was just slightly carbed with a "Pifff" sound as you open the bottle. Small bubbles climbing up from the bottom of the glass. Should be great at 2.5 Volumes.

Edit: 27.6 Psi not 27.5

I forgot to mention that the 27.6 PSI for 2.5 volumes is at 68 Deg. I'll build a chart to compensate for carbing temperatures.

pimento said:

I bottled some graff weds night, so I thought I'd try out this method.

Half the graff was bottled with the right amount of priming sugar and the other half back sweetened with some frozen AJ.

I've got the primed graff in the bottle with the gauge and another soda bottle filled with backsweetened graff side by side so I can check the carbonation with the squeeze test before pasteurizing.

I was surprised how quickly the PSI went up, 5 psi in about 3 hrs, then it tapered off and is slowly rising past 8 psi today.

I'm really hoping this works out, it would be nice to have a hard number to go by instead of guessing.

Click to expand...

I have some info for you but your in basket is full.

Ok, I know I said that I wasn't going to add to the post, but currently the pressure is up to 16.0 Psi. I'm hoping that the PSI is up to 27 to 28 PSI by the weekend. This looks like its going to work. I'll add a post or a video showing the carbonation when I reach my pressure if it ever does or the bottle blows.

I think I'm going to start making the new caps for the Grolsch bottles which will accept the Pressure Gauge.

Temperature of basement has changed to about 64 degrees constant now. I'm now looking for 25.3 Psi. The bottle is currently at 18.5 so only about 7 Psi to go now.

I will also put the bottle with the gauge on it in the Pasteurization pot to note the pressure increase at 160 to 170 degrees for 15min.

Looks like maybe this weekend I'll pasteurize.

Also, looks like my tracking ticket on the Tap-A-Draft says "in transit", so it looks like I'll be kegging and bottling Beer this weekend as well as pasteurizing cider

Well, I'm slightly over 20 Psi on the pressure now. No signs of the bottle or the gauge threads failing. This is definitely going to work. The data falls in line with the typical as 2 weeks of bottle conditioning is the norm.

I have not gathered what I would call empirical data this time around, however it does explain why the typical 2 week conditioning works. My concern would be with where the fermentation is stopped, and also with how aggressive a yeast was being used. I believe this method would provide a safety factor.

I don't believe that this would replace the proven wait time and pasteurizing methods that have been described, however it would provide a method that would ensure safety and repeatability.

I think a method that uses squeezing a bottle to test for completion of the conditioning process is subjective at best. I found the bottle to be very stiff with a pressurized feel to it with only 5 to 10 psi. This however would not have produced a good carbonation. Even testing with opening a bottle every few days leaves a fair amount of error. In fact, I don't think that I could tell the difference between 10 and 20 psi of carbonation pressure with the squeeze method.

I don't know how expensive one of these psi gauges is, but when you consider the consequences, it would appear cheap.

The next test in this series will be to see how much the pressure rises when pasteurization is started. I will post what I see with the pressure rise during that period.

Pimento had discussed with me about a event that he had where the carbonation appeared good via typical methods, but had bottles burst during pasteurization. I hope to find out what the typical pressures are during that process.

Wish me luck.

Final Data located in this thread:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/bottle-carbing-idea-final-data-review-205862/