Bottle Conditioning California Common (Steam) Beer

Just bottled today. During fermentation, the stuff was rather entertaining at the huge amount of bubbling in my airlock. As active as the Calif Lager yeast was in primary, should I expect a faster carbonation?

Yes, I am very impatient. This is a fine tasting brew, even before carbonating. If I had C02 equipment, I'd force carb so I could drink it right away.....

I may have scored on this batch.

Your beer will be carbed an conditioned, when it's done carbing and conditioning, and not a minute before.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer. Lower temperatures take longer.

And just because a beer is carbed @ three weeks, doesn't mean that it doesn't still taste like crap and won't need more time to condition.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.

Lazy Llama came up with a handy dandy chart to determine how long something takes in brewing, whether it's fermentation, carbonation, bottle conditioning....



Temp and gravity are the two factors that contribute to the time it takes to carb beer. But if a beer's not ready yet, or seems low carbed, and you added the right amount of sugar to it, then it's not stalled, it's just not time yet.

Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."

Revvy, have you sunk to just copying and pasting your posts? Seems I read this before..... (And NO critique there - the answer is well-repeated).

As a noob, I'm still opening them a bit young - I have enjoyed tasting the progression from crap to, well, not crap. I usually sample once a week after the first two weeks have passed. Some have taken a few weeks, others have taken over that by quite a bit. It is fun sampling and tasting the beer as it matures.

Back to my unanswered original question: Do we expect it to carbonate more quickly than the ales - again, looking back at the volcanic activity during the original fermenting - or is it purely based on gravity (and this is a low gravity beer, about 1.015 now, at lease compared to my other ales so far).

Nothing really matters about the past once you enter into the bottling phase and add fresh sugar, at least in terms of when carbonation will complete. It doesn't really matter how it was brewed, whether or not it was a lager or an ale, AG or Extract, secondaried or not...rocking fermentation or not. All that stuff has little bearing on the carbing process...you add your sugar and you wait your three or more weeks....hence the answer i gave you It's 3 weeks at seventy really regardless of the afore mentioned things.

Thanks! I learn slow, but I does learn.

'Course, if its hot or sharp, I can learn real fast.....

70 degrees in my house is a real challenge this time of year. So, maybe more weeks at 65.....